What's It Going to Take to Get to the Next Level

What makes trading such a difficult pursuit for people? It's so much more challenging than anything that most have ever engaged before. They take the same winning mindset. They're going to work hard, okay? They really are going to learn this new thing. They're going to take the same winning philosophy of working hard, of being persistent, of never giving up. And then, you know, they just say, you know, if I do that, the upside so big, I'm going to learn how to do this. And then what happens? They'll spend three or four years in trading where they know this stuff, they know how to trade. But when they get into trading, it's like they can't, they can't do it. Something happens. And what they do is they see their capital either stay stagnant or get smaller.

The problem here is really about.

Literally the mind that you brought to trading, no matter how successful it's been in the past, is not going to be the mind that generates success in trading. Success in trading has nothing to do with hard work, winning attitude, or even being smart. Ultimately, what you're going to have to do in order to become a successful trader is you're going to have to override programming that has been there for millennia upon millennia, Millennia since our caveman days and even before then. We are wired, okay, to literally when we respond to uncertainty, we respond to it with a sense of vulnerability. That vulnerability is hardwired to produce the fight flight response. That's what's happening when you try to pull a trigger. And yet at the same time, you want more confirmation, more confirmation the trade's gone. You're seeing it right there. You're seeing, you know something. The emotional brain's thinking, well, if he doesn't pull the trigger, he can't lose money. And so we avert disaster because ultimately that emotional brain viewers cannot discern the difference between discomfort, facing uncertainty and biological threat. The saber toothed tiger at your door. And when you're trading, this is what the instinctual self is there, that survival instinct is there. And the moment that you get into it, that's not your thinking mind working anymore. It is short circuited. It literally is a place where information is coming into the brainstem, from the brain stem, into the hippocampus, into the limbic system. And literally it's deciding whether or not it's going to take the low road. That literally moves from feeling to action without thought. That's what happens. You go, what happened? I don't know that's what happened or whether or not it can be Regulated and that information can be sent to the higher brain centers. That's all that thinking that you need to be able to do when you're trading. Ultimately though, you're wired instinctively for the first, for fight flight. And until you learn to rewire it, you're stuck. And you keep doing these things, doing these things. Let me give you an example. We know that we have to rewire this thing to reprogram the way your instinctual survival skills deal with the uncertainty of trading. I work with a client, this is actually happening right now where he's a good trader, he's profitable, and he trades at three to five contracts per trade. And he gets into it and he has a methodology that once he gets into that trade, he literally has five three minute bars that he's looking at. And by the third bar he pretty much knows whether he needs to take a small loss or whether or not he needs to see what the probability is. Yet he keeps faltering there. And he will say, let me give it a little room, let me give it a little room. And he does that. And all of a sudden, of course it crashes on it goes against him. Then he says, oh my God, I can't be wrong, I can't be wrong. And then I'm going to add more money to it. It's going to turn around, it's going to turn around, I'm going to make. And it doesn't big loss. And if you look at his trades, what you see is you have a couple really bad days in his trading thing that really brings his losses to winners into a bad place. You know, you need to be working where you're, you know, you're minimizing loss and maximizing the gain. And you're going to see that in your win to loss ratio. But here he is, he's going, he knows how to trade and he's looking at it. Ultimately what we go down and we find out is the survival instincts have triggered. This guy grows up and he's never the smartest kid, but he works hard to achieve and he just doesn't like to lose. And he realizes if he works hard, works hard, he can win. Most of the time he takes that trait and it's been very successful in his business, very successful business guy. He gets into trading and it turns against him. Ultimately what we discover at the very base of this is that he doesn't want to be seen as stupid, he doesn't want to be seen as not adequate. And he will try to cover that up by harder Work. And then he does. I don't want to lose. I'm going to work harder for this thing and it doesn't work out. That's the instinct. He literally is. From a. From an emotional brain standpoint, he's experiencing biological threat. To the psychological aspect of a trader. It's discomfort. You know, I'm in ambiguity. I have this thing where I'm going to be taking a small loss. I need to be. I need to have it down, but it's not. So ultimately.

We have to do two things to produce success in trading. The first is we have to overcome this biological wiring, this programming of ours about the survival instinct. If you don't manage that, it will keep erupting and hijacking perfectly good thinking, and you'll never be able to apply the knowledge you have of trading. The second thing is you have to start looking in your psychology. And in that psychology, what you're looking for are the beliefs.

That you have about your ability to manage uncertainty. The truth is, most people fear uncertainty and their entire life is organized around avoiding uncertainty, either by avoidance, by fear, or by being a winner, by overcoming things, by winning. That's the whole thing. Ultimately, that kind of psychology again, may have worked really well in another time, in another place, but in the pursuit of trading, it doesn't work. Ultimately, what you're looking to do is you're going, okay, I have to really examine my beliefs. I have to look and I have to go, you know something?

I know that the only thing that I really control here is the mind that I bring into this moment. I need a mind that can really manage and lock in to probability and it be okay. I don't need to have a survival mind right now. I don't need to win. I need to perform. This is really about process, not winning, not outcome. Ultimately, you're going, that's what has to occur. To do that, there's several things that have to be done. The first thing is you have to learn literally a lot about your brain and a lot about how it produces mind. But the second thing is you're going to have to regulate the emotions that trigger fight flight. Until you can do that, there is no getting to the beliefs that you really need to get at. Second thing is, you need to develop an observer, a sense of mindfulness, of where you can step back out and say, what are the beliefs that are driving my performances? And like our friend that I was telling you about, he discovers something, says Randy, I had no idea that was down there. It's down There. And now he's found a way to rework that, to rework the belief so that he can stay in trade and it be okay. And ultimately for him, smart has nothing to do with this, friends. It has to do with okay, enough, smart enough and being able to follow the rules that take you out of gambling and move you into predictable probability. Okay, Ultimately, what you discover very clearly within all of us are or emotional programs that have been programmed for instinctual survival and they get socialized for our winning nature. Those have to be reprogrammed. You know, you're no longer trying to win, you're trying to perform. And if you perform well, your methodology is going to give you the edge that you've been looking for. And all of a sudden you get traitor state of mind. That's how it's done. But you have to go in and find the right emotional programs because what you discover is this. There's no such thing as freedom from emotions. You'll never achieve that. However, there is freedom of emotion. You can design the mind that engages uncertainty. And friends, that's the trick.

That patient, disciplined mind can be built. You're just not going to snap your fingers and it's there. But it can be built from interior experience so that when you experience the uncertainty, the shortcut to vulnerability and then to fear is cut. And what happens when you hit that vulnerability? You learn to pull forward. Discipline, impartiality. That's the power, friends.

And the second thing is.

You need to be looking at the group course. We have a group course that's coming up in June that is a powerful course for the budget minded. Okay, it's not the one on one of the individual course, but it's powerful. It teaches you these very skills of how to do exactly what I've been talking about here in this video. So come and see, come again. Come to the free webinar. Explore this stuff and see how you can literally build a mine that can help you to achieve your dreams, your goals of trading. Thank you.