Your Hidden Money Beliefs Sabotaging Your Trading Mindset

Money is not what you think it is. You know, that green stuff, all that stuff we want to accumulate and be able to show how we're powerful and stuff like that, collecting that, you know, we want to make money. Who, what trader in their right mind doesn't think, I'm going to make some money today? Yet what you're doing in a case like that is you're putting yourself in a position of where you have no control over the outcome, whether or not you win or lose. Yet your mind is focused on winning and not losing. Why is that such a big deal? First of all, your emotional brain, what we might call the caveman brain, has no idea what legal tender is money. What it knows is survival. You know, up until probably 5, 6, 7,000 years ago, there was no money. And we have all this evolution from 6.5 million years ago up to almost right now, where money was never part of the equation. Money, from the emotional brain standpoint is really about survival and winning, living another day. Because in those days, money became a symbolic representation of power.

The ability to control outcome, the ability to produce safety, and the ability to have status within your clan. That's a big deal. You get all the really, you get the nice places to eat and all that, but you also have access to the breeding, you get the top flight breeders, and that's what moves the species forward. So now let's backtrack this. What happens when the saber toothed cat comes and confronts the clan and the leaders show up, the alphas show up to defend the clan, who they have to be able to confront that fear of death because if they don't confront it, if they don't win, there's somebody else's meal. Okay? Now that's what we were bred and that's what the genetic traits are that we bring to the game.

Okay, we don't want to lose because that's forfeiting our life on a very primitive level. Remember.

Your primitive caveman brain does not know about money. It knows about survival. And you think about it, a trade's going against you. It's really approaching your soft stop. You go, you don't want to lose. You don't want to lose. You're going to fight like hell just to make it through. Yeah, that's your genetic predisposition. That's what is known as evolutionary psychology. You bring it with you to the game. It served us incredibly well for millions of years, but yet then you walk over to trading and all of a sudden these very primitive instinctual impulses take over mind, take over everything. And when it doesn't know that taking a loss, it's just taking a loss. It's part of the game of trading now, the caveman brain, under stress, it doesn't know about trading. It knows about life and death. So what I want you to see.

Right here is that when you say, I'm going to make some money today, you're setting yourself up, sure, in goals. Everybody wants to make money. But do you do it by protecting and making, enforcing, trying to force your will upon the markets? That doesn't work. Not wanting to take a loss and spiraling into revenge. Trading doesn't work. Scarcity thinking doesn't work. No. Then you're scared to even get in a trade. This is something we bring from our past, from our ancestors.

And in trading, to be successful.

Consistently profitable, you're going to have to undo what evolution has done and you're going to have to create a workaround. Because ultimately, caveman truly is looking for the power to control environment, outcome. It wants to be able to produce safety and it wants prestige, it wants status in the community, all that stuff. You know, even thinking now, you think about the big alphas who come in, have made lots of money going into trading and they blow things up. Every alpha I've ever met is trying to do something, make money, to prove that he matters. So here you go. At these very core levels of cognition and belief, that's what we have to get to. Because ultimately what you'll discover, this is really all about your sense of adequacy. Yeah. Am I good enough? Am I deserving enough? Do I deserve to make any easy money? Or.

If I get money, I'll matter. I'll have respect, I'll have prestige, I'll have all that stuff. I'll have power, I'll have safety. That's what's driving in the background, friends. It's not going to go away. And you can poo poo it all you want.

But when you trade, what you're doing is you're taking your beliefs about your ability to manage uncertainty from way back then and modified today, and you're testing them against the markets and in that, the health of your trading account. What you're looking at is how effective those beliefs are for you to become a consistently profitable trader. There's no way around it, friends. You've got those core beliefs about your adequacy, your worth and your mattering, okay? And you're trying to prove yourself or not die. And we recognize we want to win. Because that gives status, it gives power, it gives safety. Who doesn't want to celebrate when they really do a really a great one and you really knock it out of the ballpark? But that's dangerous in the trading world because that celebration sets the mind up to be in a mood and an emotion that produces really poor thinking for trading.

So what I'm asking you to do is to really take a look at your trading account and really recognize you are looking at your instinctive beliefs about money, about power, about mattering, about status in play. And when all of a sudden you're going tilt and stuff like that, what you're recognizing is your state belief is not what your performance belief is. That's what has to change.

And ultimately.

The people who really arrive at the top and stay there, what they realize is whether or not they win or they lose.

They'Re okay, they're good. The winning and losing does not affect them. It's performance, it's not their being. They acknowledge that I'm good enough just the way I am. I matter whether or not I win or lose. Suddenly money.

Is no longer the tool used to produce mattering power, safety, adequacy. It comes more from within. That's why I've come to really see that trading, the ultimate self mastery journey. You're going to have to master yourself and what nature has given you. Recombine it to do some workarounds so that you can produce the mind that can work in probabilities. Because remember that caveman was all about certainties. Whether or not it was an illusion didn't matter. He had to believe it. And his chances of living to 25 were slim and none. So you're looking at it now and you're going, oh, I need to reinvent the mind that engages. I need to get at the very beliefs that I actually see stopping my performances. That's what we're talking about, friends. And at the very end is what I call inherent worth. That's what you have to develop. It's not about winning or losing, okay? Winning and losing has nothing to do with your life as a biological threat. It has to do with your performances. And you come to a moment of where I'm good, whether or not I win or lose. That's not about my being, it's about my performances. At that particular time frames, you have a good shot at building the mind that can trade in probabilities to build an intentional mind for trading where you don't control outcome. Okay? Your deserving is not part of the game. You know, scarcity thinking is really about, do I deserve this? Can I risk this? And you're going, okay, I get it now. I have a deep worthiness living within me that I have to tap into. And I have to pretty much learn to believe on a limbic level so that when I get into these clashes with uncertainty and there's stress all around and there's capital at risk, the stress is eustress, good stress rather than distress. And all of a sudden the performance is there. That, my friends, is how you make money. But what I want you to notice is how your understanding of money has profoundly changed. I like Branson's view of money. He says, look, money is for making things happen, okay? It's not about his worth. It's not about his mattering, it's not about his adequacy. No, money is how to make things happen with trading the medium money, okay? Don't confuse it with power, with your own adequacy. You're deserving and get to those beliefs that are hindering you and have the courage to face those demons down and to master them. Goodbye.