Trading Psychology and How The Mind Works (II)

February 16th, 2012, 06:05 AM

blammo

"Excerpted from Georges thread intro"
"It actually has one more role, it's the lazy mind. Think of it as a playing device that has recorded something and it's playing it all over again. It refuses to accept new information. Whenever new information is send to it, it does a check. Say that I make the decision of, let's say start jogging every morning at 5.00 am. It takes in the information, does an analysis, chews it, and spits it out, saying; Nope, we don't recognize that idea, thought. We haven't done that before, and there's no place for something that's bothering our protective laziness. "

I'm an expert at stopping smoking.I've done it dozens of times.After a few days without smoking I would begin to start feeling smug about how easy I was finding it to quit.I believe that what you call the "lazy mind"(which perceived me to be a smoker) would put whatever stupid idea into my head it would take to restore my proper status as a practicing smoker.
The excuses I (or rather my subconscious) produced, and I consciously fell for, seem so absurd, once out from under this spell, it's embarrassing. Examples would be,"Well you quit for 2 weeks, it's obvious you can quit any time you want,so you might as well start again", or, "take a drag to remind yourself how awful it tastes".
The way I finally quit for good was that I realized if I never took another drag,I couldn't start again. I'm nothing,

if not stubborn, and after about a year with this new approach, the cravings and idiotic rationalizations stopped and I knew I was no longer (even subconsciously), a smoker.The "STRUGGLE" was over and the idea of me starting again
has been preposterous for 20 years now.
Smoking is a black & white issue. You either do or you don't.Trading obviously has a lot more nuance, and my knock em down drag em out battle with my subconscious over smoking won't work on my trading demons.My smoking experience tells me you, (George) are right about the illusion of free will, and the formidable power of your potential ally or foe. Best we pull on the same end of the rope.
I certainly intend to try the methods you offer in part IV of this thread and thank you for providing even a potential solution to this problem.

I am happy my posts could you bring you to these kind of perspectives. Overall we can say that we're pretty much bio-robots imprinted with a lot of associations during our early life's. Ironically the information is not even ours, meaning that we were imprinted by our parents and society during our early life.

I've often asked myself why change is so difficult, and sometimes it feels as if evolution has played us a trick.

I guess things have to do with continuation. Every single day, every single action is constantly perceived and compared with earlier (stored) information in order to get a match. Ironically we do get a match even if there�s one missing (the aspect of overtrading in many cases). This in its turn affects our perceptions. It really makes you wonder! Do I perceive the pure, objective information that's out there or is it just a product of my own filters?

In order to be able to change this one thing has to be added. We are creating our reality through our five senses and through our experience of different patterns, situations etc. In other words through our associations of things/events/happenings etc.

All that is creating a so called "belief system". Belief systems CAN'T be changed!!! Why? I don't know, as I said before, it might be the Evolution playing us a trick, or it might be for the sake of continuity, dualism, whatever.

But, here comes the good news! We can activate a new belief system, actually without even having to know what causes the old belief. It's all about creating a new one and activating it.

Now, in order to be able to do that one has to be able to catch him/herself before that behavior happens.

I've come up with a couple of steps that one has to go through in order to get there. The key is awareness (self-awareness).

Imagine that the color red creates our negative reaction, hence every time we see the color red we get the effect of that = stress, etc. It goes something like this:

1. One sees the color red and gets stressed.
(Here�s unfortunately where most of us are. Why? Because we get stressed without even being aware of it and it takes ages until we start listening to our bodies and to all the signals signaling the stress)
2. One sees the color red and gets stressed, BUT is actually reacting to it while being stressed.
(That�s the first step to increased awareness, when we find ourselves in the middle of the stress being aware of it.)
3. One sees the color red and becomes aware of it.
(Here�s where we�ve started to develop an even higher self-awareness. Now we�ve come to know ourselves pretty well. We can even identify what�s causing us our stress and we have the option of choosing; to get stressed or not!)
4. One sees the color red, is aware of it and choses to neutralize the trigger.
(That is a very advanced level of self-awareness hence we�re even able to change the outcome to our advantage.)

So the key is to develop a higher self-awareness level. In order to work with this and activate a new �belief system� all we have to do is to get to level 2 and beyond. Become aware of the �wrong belief system� and start to activate the new one by practicing the �good one�. When do I know that I�ve crossed over? The key is to change the color red to something positive and that will allow you to remain on level 1 and be happy (speaking in trading terms J )

April 19th, 2013, 04:28 AM

vtechdir

George and Mike,

Indeed, these are the most important assets to build when one starts trading:

- the trading plan
- the trading journal

There are several good coaches in these space and some of their offerings are quite affordable:

- Adrienne Toghraie
- Norman Hallett
- Van K. Tharp
- Janice Dorn

and a good money management rule in Alexander Elders books - 2% or lower of available capital

In my opinion those coaches above are ment for traders which have actually overcome such things as mentioned by traderX and want to work to get just more performance.
If you do not have a sound tested trading system, if you do not have the discipline to wait for your setup as noted in your trading plan. I think cheaper methods can help you.

I have done a NLP Practitioner education, this enables me to help myself. And it was definitly responsably priced compared to prices for trader coaches. I also benefited by this kind of education in a social way, i met people which are have now the same education and are willing to coach for maybe no money or for a small fee.
Right now i am teaming up with one of them to work on my personal value system. Just because the other one is interested in coaching and wants to have practice.

If i encounter during that process problems i cannot solve, there will be the next step to pay maybe 80� per hour for a professional coach to work on that bigger problem.

So in my opinion self distraction is not a trading specific problem but a very general thing every coach with no trading focus can work up that problem with you.

October 14th, 2015, 01:56 PM

Really enjoying reading your posts George.
Thank you.

October 5th, 2016, 05:07 PM

The subconscious mind, a source of unlimited power.
Thank you for great article.

Trading Psychology and How The Mind Works (II)

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Trading Psychology and How The Mind Works (II)