Your Hidden Beliefs About Money Sabotage Your Trading Mindset

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Welcome, everyone. Welcome to guess what? 2023. How on earth did that happen? First off, let me make sure that everybody can hear me. So if some people would just simply type into the chat box, just simply yes or a Y, I would really appreciate it to know that I'm just not talking out to the ethers and nothing is happening. Yes. Okay, we're good. So what this means is that if you can't hear me, it's probably in your setup and you might need to go out and come back in. So of course they wouldn't have heard you. Of course you wouldn't have heard me. So, yeah, that's. Boy, it's a. It's a good one, boy. Now, the other thing, as far as, like, housekeeping goes, is that traditionally I hold questions to the end of the present presentation and go ahead and write them in if you have questions as we go along. But I'll get to them as, you know, basically at the end of the presentation because I've just simply found that it, it interrupts me and my thought process and we don't want that to happen. And it also, a lot of the materials are covered. But today, today we're taking a little bit of different tact than I usually do in my presentations. What I want.

What I want is this is. I want us to really, to really think about it. We're having this, this, this computer seems to have a mind of its own and it wants to jump to the first slide. I don't know, maybe it's a spooky deal. Now what we want to do is we actually want to take a look at the beliefs that you hold about money.

The way they intermingle with your decision making and your performance in trading. This is going to be very powerful because a lot of people really don't recognize that their beliefs sitting there working and you don't see them, you don't even think to think about them. But they're showing up in your P and L statement. So let's take a look at this. Let's take a look. And where we start, where we start now, we can't get it to move forward. This is funny. There we go. Where we start is how do you really believe? Do you have an abundance idea that money is going to be coming to you, or do you think you have to really be checking out that money and watching it like a hawk, or do you believe that, you know, whatever you have is going to be taken from you?

Here.

We'Re not talking about what you say you believe. We're talking about what is evidenced by the health of your trading account. Because the thing is, is that what you say you believe and what you believe that is revealed in your performances are very, very different. What we want to do is we want to start saying, let's get back the talk. Get. Let's get past that talk. You know, when people get into trading, they never think about their beliefs in trading. That could really be in the problem.

One guy says, you're sounding like Donald Duck. Okay, let's do this. One guy says, I sound like Donald Duck, and the other says, I don't have any sound at all. It's the same one. Okay. I just want to. I want to make sure that everybody else. Are you hearing me clearly? So type in some answers really quickly, please.

I like that. Sounds like you sound fine. Okay, Clearly. Okay, we got it. Well.

I am only responding to Donald Duck to one person. So at any rate, the key, though, is what we really want to do is start going exploring the mystery between how we go about performing and how we go about talking about what we believe. There is a term that I use often in my work called fraud as a way of basically a part of the adapted self that in my deeper work, and that in that fraud, what the fraud is doing. He's talking the talk, but he's blowing up his account.

There's a shift. And yet if you talk to him, he thinks he's the world's greatest traitor.

In a public Persona. But yet, when you start taking a look at his P and L statement, you see something else being revealed. And the essential truth here, the essential assumption here, is that your trading account, your trading account is the barometer, is the meter about what beliefs that you're actually bringing to the performance.

About your ability to manage uncertainty. And all these photographs right here are depicting different beliefs about their relationship with money. But the thing is, is that the truth meter would be the trading account's help. It would be telling you what beliefs are really showing up to perform. And out of that, what we want to do is in neurobiology, we separate beliefs into something called explicit beliefs. Okay? And the explicit beliefs, the ones you know about, they're the ones that you talk and say, yeah, I believe this. I held this value. Da da da da da da. The ones we're actually interested in here.

Are your implicit beliefs. These are the beliefs that you don't necessarily know you have. Actually, I doubt if you know if you have, but they're the ones that keep showing up, that sabotage you, that get you into situations where you go, why does this keep happening to me? And what you'll discover is that the implicit belief is back there, that somehow you've kind of built a wall around and haven't had access to, to say, oh, this is what's actually going there. And how does this occur? How do we actually develop implicit beliefs?

Implicit beliefs are the ones that are poured into us from the previous generation into the generation that you're of, and that you will pour into the generation that you're that comes after you. They are poured. They are the historical beliefs that ran in your family, ran in your culture, and they took shape from the womb, from the cradle.

But by the time you get to being a traitor, you would never know that these beliefs are there.

You would, you would have to really examine them. They're so familiar. They're so familiar that they just simply seem.

Just part of the. Just, you know, that you don't even see them, you don't even know they're there. And yet they take over your perception. When you get out of your personal comfort zone and before you know it, when that trade goes against you, whammo. What you begin to realize is what is actually going on here? Why do I keep saying that I'm a disciplined trader? I believe that with all my heart and soul. But when I get into the act and I have capital at risk and I may be taking a loss, what happens is suddenly I'm not a disciplined trader. There, my friends, right there, is the difference between an explicit belief I'm a disciplined trader and the implicit belief of that's actually operating, that is generating losses. And as a traitor, you're going to have to find out, you're going to have to drill down and you're going to have to find these implicit beliefs and expose them to yourself, which will be uncomfortable. And then you're going to have to learn how to build them into higher functioning beliefs that have the ability of managing uncertainty very differently, that you would be able to manage uncertainty in a very disciplined, impartial way. But again, these are beliefs that came out of your early childhood development as you were developing a self and they just simply went like down, like a submarine and weren't visible until you got torpedoed. These are the beliefs that eventually are going to have to get exposed so that we can actually develop a mind that can deal in probabilities.

And one of the big deals.

Out of our evolutionary psychology comes a powerful need to control Outcome, okay? It comes from our forefathers. It goes back all the way from six and a half million years ago to when we're just getting out of trees. It goes to our caveman days. It goes into our futures. It stays. And what happens is that we humans have a powerful need to control outcome. And when we don't control outcome, we experience powerlessness. Somebody else is in control, and we might. You know, we might just say, I'm a victim and I can't do anything about it. We might say, I'm a rebel, and I'm going to fight this to the core. I'm going to show you. But the truth is, in trading, no matter what beliefs you have about your ability to control things, you have no control over outcome. And trading, you have probabilities, but you do not have control. And all of a sudden, conflict between the reality of trading probability and your old, ancient caveman brain are sitting there, and you're going. It wants to control an outcome, even though it's impossible to, because it is what allowed that caveman to survive, to become the modern humans that we are.

And the truth is, is very few people just never dig down to their implicit beliefs. They're pretty uncomfortable. You know, oh, my God. What if I really believe that I felt like I was inadequate? I would much rather tamp that down and pretend I have another game and talk like I'm a real pro. And the thing is, is that.

In trading, cause and effect are crammed almost.

Side by side to each other, so that when you get into a trade within a very short period of time, you find out the result, and out of that, your reaction to that result is actually a representation of that implicit belief. If it's like, oh, I took a loss. I'm good. Everything's fine. I. I'm still. I'm still okay with myself, and I. I made it a small loss. And that's the game they're playing. And you see, out of that, an implicit belief is that I do not. I do not equate myself with my performances, all of a sudden, I don't have to control outcome. I have to control the mind. I bring to probability. Yet at the same time, if you happen to have a primitive belief that says I have to win or I lose, and understand a caveman losing meant you were somebody's meal, so you didn't want to do that. So ultimately, when you put money to the test, what you're doing is you. You come to expose those implicit beliefs that probably you've been hiding from or didn't know where to look. Today I was working with a trader and in my, in my individual coursework, you know, you're getting into a moment of where you're looking for certain emotional energies and learning how to pull them forward into working minds, that you build a mind, an emotional cocktail from which the mind comes from. And one of those is the self soothing of caregiver. And he looked at me and says, Randy.

I had no idea there was such a thing. I never knew that you were supposed to calm yourself, soothe yourself when you're taking a loss. I always thought you fought it.

What we're saying there is that he holds an explicit belief I'm a man and I don't feel things. And the implicit belief is that I just took a loss, my life is in danger, I have to fight back. This is the kind of stuff that we have to look at. And out of that, when you start trading, you go through the drill, you go through training, go through training, then you trade with paper. You need to be able to make sure that you know mechanically how to move through a trade, how to say, these are the rules that I have, this is the methodology I'm using, this is a system and I've gotten them all together. And the truth is, is that there's always a reset button. So you're walking the tightrope, but underneath you is a rope that catches you. If you happen to take a loss, the loss isn't real. It does not activate the instinctive survival traits living within you. And often what traders do is they get a false sense of confidence about their paper trading. They're just pretty much meaning money. And I'm going to be able to make, boy, this is, my dreams are coming true. I can do this thing. And then they go live and everything falls apart. What they're doing at that moment.

Their implicit beliefs, their limbic beliefs about their ability to manage uncertainty are not being revealed because there is no stress, there is no really challenging where risk is real because, well if I, if I miss it, okay, there, I blew it. I'll learn from that. No you don't. You only learn how to deal with money in trading by risking real capital while trading. That's when you learn, you don't learn about risking capital when you're trading paper. There's always that, there's that difference because.

When you're trading capital.

There is no, there is no rope to catch you. And this is the piece. This we have to say, okay, now I'm beginning to see that my Explicit beliefs. And my implicit beliefs are not one and the same. The moment that I take away that safety cushion.

My implicit, my subconscious, my emotional beliefs arise and take over the trading mind. And that's, and that's the piece that we need to look at, you know? And what we really want to know.

Is why on earth.

Do these beliefs about money have such power over us? Okay. I mean, it's like, you know something, you know, I, I, I should be able to do this. I can do it on paper. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to do it. In live trading, where the money's real, there just shouldn't be anything. I've got it down. And here is when we have to acknowledge something humans, the social mammalians, that we are like to believe.

Okay? We like to believe that, hey, you know something?

I can sit here and I can sit there and I can, I can believe that this money, I have power to do that. And yet when we get really put up with it, we start exposing this flaw in our thinking. Because ultimately we are not rational beings that have an emotional nature.

That's what traitors believe. That's what Rene Descartes brought in with that whole thing about rationalistic thinking is he separated mind from body, brain from emotion. The truth is, is that you are an emotional being. You are the embodiment of motion. Your flesh is the embodiment of motions that rationalizes whatever the emotional brain has already talked about, has already decided. And this is where it is. It's, then you're going, oh, my God. Well, what it, what is it? What is it about our beliefs about money that have so much power? Well, let's take a look at, from our primitive, primitive evolution back in the day when, you know, going to, there was no such thing as going to McDonald's. There had to be a kill. There had to be something is that there was a hunter, gatherer. And what happens is each one of these guys doing this job is in dire danger. And there's some people that would never do this yet what you're looking at is power. Power.

Understand there wasn't money back then. Power to that caveman ancestor of yours meant control over outcome. It, it meant being safe from an animal that they're killing. And it meant status. It meant that you were one of the important guys in the tribe. And it also gave you access to the breeding rights that occur. Because only what you will discover is that the leaders, the ones who succeeded the alphas, are the ones that got the best breeding rights and that's what again, that's evolution. That's just pushing the genes into the future. And out of that, that's what our brain got built around. Okay? And then out of all that, it came to a point where it became a representation. Money as it came into being became a representation of personal power to survive in a dangerous world. It's easy to see that, you know, you start realizing, oh my goodness, you know something.

And by the way, tell this guy who said something about needing hypnosis. That's crazy. Hypnosis is a short term way of trying to solve a long term problem. Okay? Now the key is this though. We go from there.

And here's the deal. I want you to take a look at this. We're correlating it. Here's a guy from 40, 50, 60,000 years ago facing off on a saber toothed tiger. In this, he's got a spear and he's facing a 1200-1400 pound carnivore that sees human beings as meal. So if that guy takes a loss.

He'S forfeiting his life as a meal to the cat.

That is power. Now you go in and caveman days are gone, money is invented, and all of a sudden money and power become synonymous with one another. It becomes symbolic to one another. Then you take a look at the guy right here, he's facing a loss and he's taking his money and going, I'm taking a loss, I'm losing my power. Of course you're going to fight for your life under a situation like that. That's the problem with revenge trading. So this is where we're looking at is we have a very primitive brain that is led by instincts that will kill us. In today's world of probability, those cavemen were not thinking in terms of probability. They were thinking of certainty of survival, even if they had to lie to themselves to remain certain. So now we've got it, is that money became linked with power.

The more money you had, the more power to control things you had, the more safety you had from danger and the more prestige you had in the community.

And then you took a loss. Or you're looking at a setup that could turn into a loss. And you can begin to see, I want to hold on to my power. I don't want to put that power in play. When you had the safety net, that wasn't an issue. But the guy on the right doesn't have a safety net. And suddenly the money that he's put on the line is now a potential loss. And for that, it's a loss that could mean death. So there you go. We see this big deal now. We still carry that brain with us. I often call it the caveman brain. It's called also the mammalian brain. It's also called the emotional brain, and it's called the limbic system. And it just so happens that when your limbic system.

Was creating the thinking brain started as a tumor. There was intricate communication networks going into the new brain from the old brain.

Yet what happens is that There were only two 19th century telegraph lines going from the thinking brain into the emotional brain. That is why all thinking is emotional state dependent. That's why your belief at the very bottom of it about whether or not you can manage the risks of uncertainty is powerful. And out of that.

Here we go. Right here. What I want you to really look at.

There you are on the left as a caveman, and you're trading. You've got that caveman living within you. I call him the inner caveman. And yet what I want you to do on the right side now, these are Neanderthals, but what happens is you're looking at wolf like creatures and there's a family there, and mom and the kid are up in the cave mouth and guess who's taking on a number of wolves with a little spear. That's why you begin to see how alpha ends up where he has to believe that he's going to win. He has to believe he can make things happen. He does that. Yeah. Because what happens is first he's fighting for his family. He's a social mammalian. He's also fighting for his very life, and he's fighting against an animal that wants him for lunch. So understand is that you have a caveman brain with you at all times. When you trade, of course fear of loss is going to be there.

But fear of loss to your caveman brain is the fear of death. It's not the loss of capital. And keeping your. Your. Your losses small so that your bigger ones can go and blah, blah, blah, blah. No, caveman doesn't know about that part. Keeping your losses small. It doesn't want to take the loss because it's going to die. So now you're looking at the connection between our old ancient brain about money. It didn't exist. Power to survive did. And then suddenly you're translating it into a future where you're supposed to be working probability, yet you have a caveman brain that's looking at life and death. And until you solve this riddle, there is no way out to becoming a successful trader. It has to be done. And this is a, this next slide is a representation of that same thing is in this brain that you're looking at that looks vaguely like an automobile. What you're doing is you're seeing the thinking brain, nerdy thinking brain, thinking, I'm in control, I can control, I can drive this thing. And you're looking in the backseat at the caveman brain, the mammalian brain, where all your implicit, all your implicit beliefs that are driving the trading mind occur the moment that you hit risk.

Okay? And what most people are blown away by is they, they may be doing micros and they may be only risking $25 in any one trade, but it triggers, they could also be doing larger lots and things like that. And they amplify it. And at some moment, the risk of losing money triggers the risk of losing life in the caveman brain. And that's when your brain gets hijacked. That's when your mind is compromised. Now, what's interesting.

Is these particular implicit beliefs are organized into a set of beliefs that we're going to describe here. And what I'm going to want you to do is.

Take a look at these and really start asking yourself, which of these beliefs are actually interacting? When I'm under stress, when I'm being challenged, which of these beliefs are actually triggering? There's a good chance when I start working with most people, they don't know the fullness of the power of the belief that's driving their performances. But let's take a look at them. Okay? And the first one is this. And this is the alphas. This is big time alpha. Money equals mattering. If I make a lot of money, then I matter. You know, if I have a lot of power, money, I matter. Every Alpha I've ever worked with comes in and what happens is they want to control outcome Alphas, they want to make things happen, okay? And they want to, they want to never lose. They, they, their whole competitive fire is there. And yet why do they really want to make a lot of money to matter? If I make a lot of money, I matter. Now the problem here is that in business and corporate life, you can be alpha and you can be, you can be the top dog. You can make things happen because you're working with other people, that you can make things happen through those people. And they make a lot of money. They come in, they have big, you know, they've made, they've done very well for them. Now they've been very successful financially. They Come into trading and find out that the trading mind is so different than the business mind in trading, you have no control over outcome. Patience is far more powerful, far more powerful than urgency to act to make things happen. And you also discover that even though you want to win, the truth is the alpha is going to have to become a very good loser, expert loser. And what happens is his mind is not built.

For the job and the needs of the trading mind. And they end up going, you know, what happens is I'm going to go in there, I'm going to make a lot of money. And they come in and they blow up. They blow up a lot of net worth. That's, I mean, I've had guys blow up $15.5 million in seven minutes. So yeah, it happens like that. But any rate, at the bottom of it, it's the money that makes me matter. Okay, you know, if I'll have respect, you know, I'll have, I'll have status. How many, how many people? It's interesting. I have Doris and I have a friend who has in the last couple years has made well in excess of $180 million. He's, he's at the top dog end of trading. And what happens is a lot of people will go into his room and they say, I'm just going to do just like him and I'm going to make all this money. And what they discover is they can't do it, they can't follow him.

Mitch just doesn't have a problem with losing. He realizes part of the game and he has absolutely no effect. Yet other people out there, when they take a loss, all this survival instinct kicks in and all of a sudden money and mattering gets mixed up and that alpha part just really blows them up. So you're looking at it and going, that's the first one. Let's take a look at the second one.

Do I really deserve easy money? Don't I have to work hard for my money? Yeah. And besides that, golly, you know something? If, what if, what if it's taken from me, but you don't deserve this. I once worked with a trader several years ago that traded with a high six figure account.

And he had been doing this for 10 years. He would move in high six figures, he would move into seven figures and he would lose back down into high seven figures. Now he'd been, he's making enough money so that he's living a comfortable life. But what happened is he's hitting a barrier, he's hitting a ceiling as he hits that second figure stuff. And he had been trying to figure this out for a decade. We start working together and what we discover. He grew up in a blue collar family where his father would slam the table to make a point. And saying nobody's worth a million dollars. That became the belief nobody's worth nobody deserves a million dollars. What this guy is, is he's channeling his father's belief poured into him right into his trading. He hits the seven figure level, the million dollar level, he loses back down, he's not worth that. It is set in his head like concrete. And yet finally we get that busted and we are able to move that. And he permanently lived beyond the million dollar mark. He grew, but what he did is he had to take a belief that was formed basically in his family of origin, in his family system that he didn't know about. He was just, he could not comprehend why this was happening. But he knew that he had a problem somewhere. He would move into six figures and from six figures into seven figures and lose back down. He knew that, but he didn't know the belief. I don't deserve it. And a lot of people don't even get that far. What happens is they don't really believe they deserve success. You know, said, you know something, I just, you know, I just, I don't really deserve it. If people really knew me, they, then they, I would, I wouldn't deserve it. This is the thing, is that it's there. You have to spot it if you ever have the hope of changing the belief structure behind the emotional reaction to uncertainty.

So another big one.

How many in here have said statements like I'll never make it, I'm just not smart enough. You know something? I can't figure this out. I can't do that. It's called inadequacy. I'm not good enough, I'm not going to make it. I'm not smart enough. And on and on and on. I'm stupid. How can, how, how could I be so lame? What a moron. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. What happens is what you're looking at is you're beating the self up. You're drilling in to a belief that you don't deserve, you don't deserve to win in trading, I see that all the time. It's easily the most common form is that, you know, you beat yourself up and what's the story, you know, is that I don't deserve it. I'm an idiot, I can't ever make it. I'm never going to be able to learn this stuff. I'm not smart enough. And this is, again, understand this, this is a belief, it's not the truth. But you've taken the misinformation, it become the certainty of belief. And more about that later. Now there's another one, scarcity thinking. This is most people, particularly that I know in the United States, the reason they would never risk to grow and do something pretty challenging and worthwhile with their life is they say, oh my God, what if I fail? And what if what I have is taken from me? My house, my family, family, all my bank. What if I risk and I lose? I don't know, I just, I, I probably ought to stay in this dead end job where, you know, I'm making enough money, but you know the truth. I'm not fulfilled. But you know, I've got all these commitments that, you know, I better, I better watch out. I have a story that I like to tell about a person had to deal with their scarcity thinking. And it was a woman who.

She was a proprietary trader and she was profitable. But what happened is she came to me because.

Basically the firm management came to her and says, Nancy, we really like you. Great person, good trader, but you leave too much money on the table. And if you can't solve that problem, then what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to, we're going to have to let you go. Okay? And so obviously that's not what she had in mind. And so what she did is she ended up hiring me and we were working. And it just so happens in her growing up, she was, she was Scandinavian and her family owned a farm in Wisconsin that really was not large enough to sustain itself. It was like a 40 acre thing. And what happened is that the family was always under threat of losing the farm and there was never enough. Any. Anytime something could happen and we could lose the farm, you know, if. And what happened is that Nancy actually remembers her father sitting at the dinner table that was his workstation and fretting about what bills to pay. And they never got to dress like the other when they went into the town. They didn't have the same nice dresses and things like that. There was always the scarcity. If we could lose the farm, there's never enough. Now understand, this is a very loving family. It's a, hey, they're Scandinavian, they're in Wisconsin, they're Lutheran, they're all this kind of stuff. They're good, solid family. Yet what happens is what's Learned in there is scarcity. What I have can be taken from me. Now, it just so happens that it ended up showing up in Nancy's trading. She would get to that thing where she was profitable and she would take a chunk of the money there and not let it run. And basically in the proprietary firm saying, well, Nancy, this isn't working for us. It needs to change. Now, once she understands where the problem originates, that doesn't necessarily solve the problem, but you actually understand the problem that you need to work on rather than something that is totally unrelated. Now she ends up learning to do that. She learns to break through that scarcity thinking mentality to where there's another level of being able to work, to be able to work with probability. I don't like to call that.

Prosperity thinking what happens. For me, it is learning that what is very natural for the brain to think about things being taken from it. I mean, it's in survival mode. And so what you're doing is, yeah, it's very easy to fall into that. And again, she's growing up in an environment that basically hypnotizes her into believing that. And that's where she got stuck in the comfort zone. That was her comfort zone. And she was in a place of saying, well, if I stick in the comfort zone, I'm not going to be a traitor anymore and not having this nice lifestyle that I have. And she solved the problem. She had to be able to figure out how to face that fear and master it. Okay, so now we've gone there and I'm adding this one because it's actually, it's not, it's not so much really directed just, just, just traitors. But a lot of people honestly believe that if people really knew me, that they would know that I was unlovable. Okay? And what they want to do, if they make a lot of money, people will love them. They believe. Yeah, the thing is people will notice me. People, people, you know, respect me and they'll do all this stuff and they'll actually have something to do with me. And again, that is not something that's not necessarily an explicit belief.

No. Most likely that trader that has that and is trying to get the respect of people around him and the love and the concern of people around him to like him doesn't know that that's what's driving his performances. But the thing is, when you take a look at it, you go, okay, what is at the bottom of this? What is it that I'm most basically missing here? And then what he finds out when he makes a lot of money. He may get adoration from some other people, but it's not love. Okay, so. So these are the most powerful self lending beliefs that you have about the fusion of power and money that are being revealed in your trading account every time you look at it. Every trader brings these self leaning beliefs into trading. I don't have a business. If it weren't for these particular sets of beliefs dominating the performances of the traders that I work with. Okay. Whether or not they're working for a big huge trading firm or whether or not they're a retail trader, this is what's there. We bring these self limiting beliefs to the game and we have to find out how to get out of the prison of that comfort zone. We have to begin to say, you know something, what is it about.

This fear I have that is keeping me in the fight flight response when taking losses are not growing the account like it should? And how can I train myself out of these beliefs? Okay. And what my promise will be is this is if you start listening to new age thinking or prosperity thinking and get into this concept of mind over matter. I'm sorry. Ultimately from my standpoint, I use more of an observational standpoint. It's where the observer that you are often becomes so telescoped in on a particular region that that's all they can see. But as you expand the observer that you are, you begin to see the richer potential within things. And you can start saying, I need to start developing them. And the very first thing that you're going to have to do is you're going to have to separate your performances from your being. Yep, that's what I said. Your performances from your being.

Trading.

Is a performance that requires deep skill sets emotionally that, that most people have tried like crazy not to have. But what we're doing is we're saying, oh, Randy, what you're saying is when I take a performance and say I fail in that performance for whatever reason because probability didn't smile on me, because I made a stupid mistake, I got sucked into overtrading, I got sucked into taking out money before I should, I didn't get into the trade, all that stuff. At that particular point in time, you're not focused on performance.

You are really hearing a voice inside your mind that I call the inner critic saying you're inadequate, you don't really matter, you're not deserving, you're unlovable.

It's going to be taken from you.

That performance has nothing to do with your being. And in My work, I actually, I use a term, inherent worth, where I'm asking the trader to get to a moment of finding this inherent worth that exists biologically in all social mammalians that we band together in groups to survive. Each part of that group is coveted by the group. They need all those resources. And what I'm doing is I'm training people to access that and to pull it forward and to recognize at the very foundational level. Like this Mitch guy that I was talking about. He said it took me about three quarters of a million dollars to figure out that whether or not I win or lose, I'm okay, I'm loved, my wife isn't going to leave me, we're going to do okay. But the truth is, is I was able to separate my performances from my being there. And after that, he said it was. It was easy. You know, I was just taking trades performances. I was not judging myself. And that's what we really wanted to look at. Because I can promise you, you're mattering, you're deserving, your adequacy, and whether or not you're lovable or not, of whether or not you have scarcity, mentality. These are the basic programming beliefs that are laying at an implicit, un, unconscious, subconscious level that's driving the performance you have. And you thinking that that performance is representational of who you are as a human being.

This has to stop.

Not necessarily easy, but you have to learn to stop it. And of course, my work is really focused on that. And here is the deal is that we like to believe that our beliefs are the truth. In fact, what happens, our beliefs become so powerful that we feel certain. What we don't recognize is that certainty itself is chemistry in the body. And most likely at the core of that belief is the word lie.

You cannot believe the misinformation that runs through your mind. Outright lies, outright deceptions. And yet we do not observe it, we do not examine it to see if it's accurate or not. And by not doing that, we stay stuck in it and out of that. Understand, a belief is really only an assessment that's taken on the power of certainty, of certainty, of truth. You know, like, I am this, I am that, I'm an Alpha, I'm going to win. I mean, I saw a tag the other day that said I win on his car tag. And I'm going, he paid money for that. And all of a sudden you discover is that, you know, at the very bottom of it, those are linking performance to your worth as a human being. And as Long as you do that, every time you make a mistake, every time you take a loss, it's going to confirm the assessment to be the truth, to be a real belief. And the power of it is the belief is that it actually starts creating your destiny. So now we go, wow, how do we really begin to work with this? The very first step is discovering and owning.

That piece. I was talking about inherent worth. What I want you to look at these two pictures, what I want you to look at, I want you to see in both.

High level primates, these are the big primates. And what you're looking at is they're both social mammalians.

And over the gorilla, what you're looking at is that mama gorilla absolutely is crazy about that kid to the point of sacrificing for it, doing everything what it can. It is that important to the mother. And gorillas have, a really unique thing, is that there is a story of where a human was doing something really stupid and holding their child up over so they could see the gorilla better, the gorilla enclosure better, and drop the child like 16ft down. It hit cushion and stuff like that. And everybody was freaking because all of a sudden this child, this really young child is in the midst of these gorillas. A female gorilla goes over to the child, picks it up, walks over to the door with it and waits for the keepers to come and open the door and take the kid away. That gorilla saw the inherent worth in the human child. Now we go to this other one where we're looking at humans all grown up and we don't a bit, we, we just want to deny that we're social mammalians, we want to deny that we're higher order primates. And yet what you're looking at is the same thing you're looking at. You're looking at a husband and wife. And what they're doing is, what they've done is they have brought forth new life into the world. And what they're doing is they cherish that part that child has inherent worth to the point where it will reorganize the man and the woman to become something completely different than they were before they got married. But this is the point is in finally beginning to see is that from a social mammalian standpoint, it doesn't have to be religious, doesn't have to be found that we are valuable just because we are. And then what I deal with in the work of mine is particularly in Western Christianity, Western Christian, some forms of Western Christianity so damage kids and adults that when they grow up, they don't want to have a dang thing to do with any spirituality. They. They judge. They're suddenly all that. And you're saying those are the things that I somehow have to work through and get at a deeper truth about the fundamental nature of who I am as a human being. This social, mammalian caring and you having this inherent worth is in your DNA. Okay? It can also be accessed from spiritual perspective. But the main thing here is to actually recognize that if you hold yourself inadequate, unlovable, you know, not important, that is not the truth. That is an assessment that got poured into you and you started looking for proof of it, even if it wasn't there. Because the saying in neural biology is this. You do not see and then believe.

You believe. Then you see through your beliefs. The reality is created through your beliefs. And this is why we're saying we want to focus on these beliefs so that you. You can go in and say, now I know what I'm really working on. My emotional nature, the way I'm reacting to uncertainty and risk and capital, is built around the belief of who I am as a human being. And I have linked it inadvertently to my performances. I need to unlink it.

So.

What I want you to get, we, as.

These highly evolved primates, these social mammalians, you're looking at right here, a small group of, again, Neanderthals. And what you're looking at is that the man sees danger somewhere in the distance. You're looking at the mother already taking care of child. You're looking at the elder recognizing that maybe he bought to keep the fire going. And what you're doing is you're seeing the men go off to confront the danger.

This is our nature. This is what inherent worth. The men are going to risk their lives for the future generations. That's what they're built to do. And mothers are going to nurture and bring a kid up to 12 years old so that they can start contributing to the society they're in. What all links them together is the inherent worth, the. The value that they have as human beings. In that group of people, we're still those people, but we've lost the small group of this. And also, they didn't have as complex lives as we have now. These people right here were all dead by age 25. That was old age back then. So getting up to reproductive age and having a baby and getting grown enough to be contributing was a major event. We human beings. I'm 71 years old. I've had a heart transplant. I would have never have made it as a caveman, okay, I would. I would have been gone long ago. And yet what happened. People compassionately helped me when I was in the. In the worst of my. Of my heart failure. So this is the key. Inherent worth is a part of who you are.

You may have to work through the lies that you learned and that you still maintain.

To get to that. But if you want to master trading, that's exactly what you're going to do. You're going to have to reclaim your inherent worth, and from there, from that fundamental organizational level, you're going to reconstruct the self trades. You have a lot of misinformation running around in your head. Okay. It's not necessarily the best belief system to guide you in probability management, though it was a good belief system that allowed you to survive the circumstances, the culture, the family system that you grew up in. But now it's time as an adult to take the second step. To reconstruct the self, to be able to perform in the midst of uncertainty, and to recognize, win or lose, you're okay.

That is exactly what my work strives to do. I look at this as if you take a look at this sculpture. What you're doing is you're actually seeing that this person is sculpting themselves from the hubris of their initial start. And that is exactly what you're going to be doing.

Your trading performances are not about you. They're about your competencies that can be improved. And the deal is, is that if you're going to become a successful trader, you're going to have to reconstruct the self. You're going to have to master the mind that you brought to trading. But my promise you is that mind rarely is effective, but you can build it. We're human beings. We actually are the ones who can actually do this. So in do that, what you're looking at.

This is the time when money and winning or losing no longer define you. You go from the guy on the left, it's all mine, mine, mine, to where you realize that you are. Your mind is really a governing committee, and you're choosing who actually what voices in the self actually take over management of your performances. That can be done. Once you develop mindfulness, once you develop the skill sets that allow you to move on. And what you do.

You become like the surfer. Okay? What happens is whether you win or you lose, you are okay.

You know something? My wife is a speckler for absolute detail. And the truth is, I figure you get it win or lose. Okay, the key is this, that surfer has no power over the outcome. That's a big wave. But what happens is he is bringing a very powerful mind into the moment of performance. If he performs well, the odds are in his favor to get the ride of his life. If he chokes, if he starts thinking about scarcity, if he starts thinking about, oh my God, what if this waves, gumps on me, all that stuff, suddenly his, his potential shrinks and it's almost like he's looking for mistakes.

This is what it's all about.

You control the mind you bring to performance. You do not control performance.

You may end up, you can perform incredibly well and still land on the wrong side of probability. You can actually do very poorly and land on the right side of probability. But the thing is, over time, the person who manages the mind, they bring to the uncertainty of riding that wave is who produces consistent profitability. Okay? And as you develop that self that can consistently perform, the mind that can consistently perform, it's not looking for winning or losing, it's looking for performing. It knows if it does that it has the psychological edge that drives the method edge. Friends, this is trader psychology. This is peak performance. And what I'd like to do is say this is that if you're interested, depending on how much you know about me, how much you've been studying me, if you don't know me, go to our website and get our free book. Just start kicking some tires, start taking a look and saying, you know something, Is this guy speaking to me and talking about an understanding of the trading mind that I've never heard before? And then read the articles, watch my videos, there's well over 200 of them. And then you go, well, and if you want to take another step, get my book, Mindful Trading. Then when you start really seeing, okay, you know something, I get it. I'm going to have to retool, rebuild the mind. And what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to train. I'm going to have to get the skill sets. I'm going to have to learn them somewhere. It's that particular time that our group course and our individual course become really important things. And right now I can tell you the course that we have starting in January is already closed. It's already hit the max that we allow. And we have a, we have a course that starts in March. Okay? And what we want to do, we like people to get into these courses early, okay? Not because I want to close the deal, because the course is so demanding that if you wait to the last second to enter the course, you're going to be behind when you show up. Because other people will have been studying these materials for a month or two or three before we actually get to the get to the group course. I encourage you, if you are interested, this is when you sign up now for March 15th. If you do that and you do it early enough, you get a free gift from us, the Emotional Regulation Workshop. And what it is, is it's. It's encouragement for you to start early to be ready for the course. That's what I want you to get. We also have the individual course, which is for very serious students who are looking for the mentorship. Coming from me, it's a much more comprehensive course. Okay. And you end up with 10 sessions with me over a period of three to four months. It's very powerful. And we get deep inside your belief system and we start doing things that could would be very difficult in a group course. Okay. But that's for people who are pretty darn serious and realize that, you know, I want to work with this guy. So what I want to do is I want to thank you for being here. I've really enjoyed myself and this is something where I really wanted to be able to talk about the beliefs that are driving your financial conversations. And what I want you to notice, these beliefs are not just driving your trading decisions.

They'Re driving the way capital money is in your life. Anyway. Okay. So we have some comments, some questions. So how this is. This is Andrew. Okay. How does an implicit belief continue to control me once I identify it? Easy. It's in circuitry. It's not some hocus pocus running around your mind. It has been codified into the very circuitry. And once it's in circuitry and has been insulated, myelinated, it is enormously resistant to change. And that's why hypnotism doesn't work well, it does well initially and then that thing comes back in. I know a comment from the last conversation I had with my dad when I was 15 and another from my grandmother at his funeral. You're the man of the house now. Suddenly drove me into hyper competitiveness and to feel at a young age I had to provide for my family. I know this is one underlying thing affecting my performance. Performance. But I know.

There'S a pivotal moment in my life. Yes, it is. That's a. You know something. A juvenile should never be saddled with becoming the man of the house. That's way Too much. I know very few men, mature males that become good rulers of the kingdom of the house. And yeah, what happens is that you take on a heavy burden and at some time you're going to have to learn to let go of that burden and to move forward. But the thing is, is you're not going to hocus pocus it. You're not going to say, I'm a disciplined trader. I'm a disciplined trader. I'm a disciplined trader. And that actually happened. That's like bs. I think he's in the group course. Okay. So it doesn't matter. Okay. And then this is Arnold. Arnold, the fear of loss for me has turned into the fear of not making any money fast. Fast enough. Yeah. See, it morphed. What? All of a sudden, you have to prove yourself. You have to prove yourself. You have to prove yourself, have to make money fast. But if I make money fast, look who I'll be. And understand this is just isn't a psychological flaw of a modern man. This is survival instincts of caveman. Is that the truth is you're taking a winning attitude that's probably come from American capitalism. And you're saying, I need to win, I need to make a lot of money. And the truth is that's not what trading is. Trading is performing well. Okay, this is his follow up. This is follow up. I got no problem losing, but when winning, I get hubris. And suddenly I don't need my trading plan anymore. Giving back all that profit. Yeah, that's what happens. It's what happen is you get euphoric. Not necessarily hubris. I wouldn't choose that word. But when you win, it makes you feel good. And I want to tell you something. A lot of my training involves when you start winning, you almost automatically fall for the first trip that says, you know something? I thought if I just got past my fear, everything would be rosy. I got past my fear. And then what happens? I started winning. I started feeling good, I started feeling overconfident. That's euphoria. You're snorting cocaine and all of a sudden you're no longer thinking straight. You're no longer thinking in a way that allows you to be a trader. And of course you blow up. Your job is now to say, you know, when I win, I need to take a moment. I need to get myself back together and recognize that the only two emotional programs that need be there as a trader while you're trading are disciplined impartiality. When you start feeling good, you're taking a drug you're dumping a system with dopamine and that dopamine is altering the way you perceive and think and then making dumb, stupid decisions. Hobble. So what if a person has more than one self limiting belief? We all do. Of course you do. You're human. These are all distinctions we're making that allow you to see that you have to be able to get at the core part of yourself and first find your inherent worth from there. What you the belief there. Like Mitch said, I'm good enough. Okay. You know, in my own language I call that conscious creation. Okay.

Here'S Andre.

What steps can I take today to start understanding what beliefs are setting me back? Look at your trading account and breathe. And as you're looking at your trading account over a period of time and you're taking and you're looking at, if you're here like everybody else is that you're not making money consistently look at them and start saying, what went on here? What is driving this? Yeah, what am I hearing in my head? You might be hearing and you might, you might be hearing a critical parent inside your head. You know, if you happen to be Chinese, what you'd be hearing is a grandmother saying, make a lot of money. Make a lot of money. Make a lot of money. You know, if you from another culture, you may get a totally different standard, but that's what you're looking for because you know those beliefs will be there and they will be impacting your performance under critical times.

How does one change one's mindset? Well. Well, Andre, I have created a group course and an individual course that do a very good job of helping people equip themselves to make that change. I also know people that write me and tell me just by watching my videos, reading my articles and playing all my stuff nonstop in the background while they trade, they have become consistently profitable. I'm blown away by that. I'm glad to hear that news. But. But I can tell you it's what most people, well, what a chunk of people do is they finally come to the moment where they recognize that Randy is telling them about the problem.

To learn how to solve that problem, you're going to have to take my courses or you may be smart enough and all that kind of stuff to figure it out yourself. But it's 95, 98% of traders lose money. So that should give you an idea.

Rachel, does it mean that the implicit beliefs never go away? We have to consciously become aware of it, it's there and change it, whatever it comes up in Trading. Well, implicit beliefs are not necessarily traits. Traits is when it becomes organically part of your DNA. Okay. Is what happens is they will be. Implicit beliefs are learned very early. And they are resistant to just hocus pocus changing. But in the work that I do, there is a very strong emphasis on.

Doing rote training in these areas. So that you dig down, you get to the belief, and you. You. I cannot tell you how important it is to act toward what I would call that orphan self of yours, that adaptive self of yours, that wounded child that lives within you. That they are loved no matter what they're loved. That you have compassion for them. Compassion is the antidote to fear. Compassion. And thanks to the Dalai Lama, I might add, who lended a lot of his monks for scientific stuff. What they found out that compassion is an emotion that can take a belief that has already been wired into circuit and detangle the circuit and reorganized into higher functioning. That's how powerful applied compassion to the self can be. There also needs to be a new leadership within the mind. Okay. I view the mind is really more of a governing committee that have various forces in it. And you as observer has to change how that committee of the mind is organized.

Here's one. Are there minds that cannot be changed, that cannot change their beliefs? There are minds that have become cast like concrete, that refuse to hear anything other than what they want to hear. We call that misinformation and believing misinformation as the truth. There are people who are just bound to that. And the best thing to do with those people is stay away from them. Move on. You're looking for people who really have a growth mentality of saying, okay, this is where I am now. How do I reorganize myself and higher functioning? That can be done. I'm living proof of that.

By all ways of reckoning, I should be dead a number of times. But here I am a very different human being than the human being I was when I was much younger.

Mathias, do you have further advice or exercises to find out more about the beliefs about oneself? Of course I do.

What I can tell you is that I focus a lot on mindfulness, but really applied mindfulness and becoming observer. Becoming observer to your thought life and starting to define the thoughts running through mind. And you discover not only is there misinformation, but there are aspects of your thinking that are highly destructive. The first thing is to slow down thought. That would be through emotional regulation, breath work, and then to produce mindfulness of where you're slowing down thought and you're beginning to see what's being said and you're beginning to see as an assessment, you're questioning it and you're discovering there's very. There's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of lying going on inside your mind. And then you start discerning that that's where you first start. Now, I also have stuff where.

I. I'm teaching people how to activate the emotional programs of discipline, of courage, of self, compassion and impartiality. That's far beyond what I'm going to give away. Okay.

Okay. This is Juan. What, what has more weight trading strategy knowledge on trading are to control on one's beliefs. Well, I'll say this is. Both are needed. They're. They're just different sides of the same thing. Is that what I can tell you is I know plenty of people who have great strategies. And when they're trading paper, they make tons of money. But the moment that it goes live and the money's real, they suddenly don't become good traders. That's the vast majority of traders. And so what you're looking at is that.

The price to get into the game is your trading strategy. To actually produce the kind of victory you're looking at requires a reconstruction of the belief systems that drive your performances. So understand this. Yeah, it's like an athlete. You know, I follow the Georgia Bulldogs who won national championship. They don't think about winning and losing. They think about doing your job.

That's what they think about. Okay. And they have people teach them technique and they have people that teach them such psychology. Yeah. And also the dogs actually have traitor, not trader, but sports psychologists on staff where they're, where they're, they're teaching these things automatically and they're. At the same time, the regular football coaches are also teaching technique. So it's both and it's not either or. It's both. And they're, they're needed together. I mean, you can have a really great centered mind but not know how to trade. And it's not going to help very much. But you can have a really great strategy but not. Have. Not have a trader state of mind that gives you an edge and you blow up the edge because you can't keep your act together. They have to be done together. Okay. So, friends, I want to thank you for being here. I have been delighted that, that we've had this time together. And what I ask of you is to really examine yourself tomorrow when you start looking at your trading account, when you start looking at that. Start listening to the rush of thoughts and start peering through them and start going, you know something?

What's going on here? And if you really want to do something, take a mirror or take a video feed off your face as you trade and watch yourself. You will see the fear, you'll see the urgency. You'll see all that and start asking, what belief is.

Manifesting this? Yeah. What belief is causing you to freak out? What belief is causing you to jump into a trade you have no business in? What is it I believe? What is it I have to do? Okay. So I thank you a lot. I wish you well. Do those exercises in the morning when you watch. Watch yourself. And if I can help you get in, get in touch, take care. Have a great year. Goodbye.