Recently I have been reading the Chimp Paradox by Steven Peters.

For those of you who are not aware this book is all about mind management and how we deal with certain situations.
Peters goes in depth about why we do certain things due to our "Human,chimp & computer"
Why we do things out of anger or do things that we don't want to do and look back going "WTF?!?"

For years I've delt with anger issues and used to be dosed out of my eye balls when I was younger, finally got to a point where I no longer needed that junk. I've read numerous book's about trading psychology and for the most part they are all the same, talking about you need to believe in your system or try and find what is holding you back in your past or why your subconscious is doing things with out your consent. This book blows every book I've ever read out of the water 10000%!!

Peters talks about specifics on why you are doing these anger/emotional filled actions and actually walks you through on how to fix this with daily exercises.

Now the whole point of this is I'd really like to start a conversation with anyone who has read this book and hopefully we can all help each other out.

Whats on your stone of life? Do you work your chimp every day ? ( gym,mental exercises, ect)

I am currently a little over half way done with the book.. read about 20-30 pg's a day no rush to get it done but am working through all the exercises and things have done a 180 turn... and that is not just with trading but with everyday life as well... hopefully this isn't temporary as I enjoy this side of things but it will require work everyday....

my stone:


stone of life:
"core values"
what you live by

Truths
1) life is not fair, things will happen that you do not wish/plan on
2)you will not always be rewarded for your hard work
3)I WILL fail at certain tasks
4)Some people will not like me
5)Other's opinions do not determine who I am


Life values:
1)you can accomplish anything "IF" you put the work in
2)Other's opinions do not determine who I am
3)You do not have to live life to others standard's
4)losing or failing at a task does not make you a loser
5)always be learning
6)explore
7)do to others as you would like done to you
8)always be helping
9)put in the hard work
10)learn to adapt, take risks

The life force:
1)find something you love doing and give 110% all the time
2)find someone to love 110%
3)take major risks
4)never stop working towards happiness
5)do things that scare you

if you have done this post what yours are.

again would recommend this book to anyone having issues following there plan/revenge trading.
(I'm not associated with peters at ALL)

here's a brief video on the book

-P

MiniP 

Recently I have been reading the Chimp Paradox by Steven Peters. For those of you who are not aware this book is all about mind management and how we deal with certain situations. Peters goes in depth about why we do certain things due to our "Human,chimp & computer" Why we do things out of anger or do things that we don't want to do and look back going "WTF?!?" For years I've delt with anger issues and used to be dosed out of my eye balls when I was younger, finally got to a point where I no longer needed that junk. I've read numerous book's about trading psychology and for the most part they are all the same, talking about you need to believe in your system or try and find what is holding you back in your past or why your subconscious is doing things with out your consent. This book blows every book I've ever read out of the water 10000%!! Peters talks about specifics on why you are doing these anger/emotional filled actions and actually walks you through on how to fix this with daily exercises. Now the whole point of this is I'd really like to start a conversation with anyone who has read this book and hopefully we can all help each other out. Whats on your stone of life? Do you work your chimp every day ? ( gym,mental exercises, ect) I am currently a little over half way done with the book.. read about 20-30 pg's a day no rush to get it done but am working through all the exercises and things have done a 180 turn... and that is not just with trading but with everyday life as well... hopefully this isn't temporary as I enjoy this side of things but it will require work everyday.... my stone: stone of life: "core values" what you live by Truths 1) life is not fair, things will happen that you do not wish/plan on 2)you will not always be rewarded for your hard work 3)I WILL fail at certain tasks 4)Some people will not like me 5)Other's opinions do not determine who I am Life values: 1)you can accomplish anything "IF" you put the work in 2)Other's opinions do not determine who I am 3)You do not have to live life to others standard's 4)losing or failing at a task does not make you a loser 5)always be learning 6)explore 7)do to others as you would like done to you 8)always be helping 9)put in the hard work 10)learn to adapt, take risks The life force: 1)find something you love doing and give 110% all the time 2)find someone to love 110% 3)take major risks 4)never stop working towards happiness 5)do things that scare you if you have done this post what yours are. again would recommend this book to anyone having issues following there plan/revenge trading. (I'm not associated with peters at ALL) here's a brief video on the book -P

Thank You for the synopsis. I will add to my reading list.


Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

good stuff...my monkey mind is always drivibg me crazy!

So Today has been a choppy mess and from looking at others journals it looks like a lot of us have had a similar day (I'm down 10 pts NQ)

A few items that I would say fall under my chimp are:
Fear of taking trades even when signaled in-
Well today there was a handful of trades that I didn't really want to take as my chimp kept feeling nervous/on edge, I think a part of this was due to the chop and my bias/chimp kept thinking it was reverse time.. anyways I ended up taking all these trades.. most worked out and only 1 was really a losers and due to the fact I was up 10 pts I could be a little more risky.
Not wanting to do my journal:
It took me 4 hours to finally complete my journal, part of this I'm sure is just pure lazyness and the other part is its hard to write down you were wrong, we want to be right 24/7 but life isnt fair and we gotta lose sometimes to appreciate the winners. I think one of my main problems with this is due to the fact my chimp thinks we have to win everyday or we are a loser ect ect. I spent the past few hours working on things as how I could re programming my computer/chimp and it really is going to boil down to following my plan and keeping this chimp at bay.. if that can be done then the losing days are nothing to lose sleep about.


I also think another one of my issues is my chimp/computer thinks that it needs to trade everyday.. I took Friday off and for some reason I felt like a turd, still worked out still read and practiced my chimp stuff but overall mood was .... not trading = bad/loser.

Now in the past 2 weeks im up about 15% .. small account and doing nothing but following my rules.. now the real test is going to be tomorrow as in the past whenever I have a red day I always tend to follow it up by being to risky and over trading... so tonight I'll be working on some of these issues and making sure tomorrow doesn't turn into a revenge day...

One of the biggest thing's about all this is recognizing what your doing, once you can do that "all" you have to do is not do it and make ways of reassuring your self that even though you aren't doing this harmful behavior that your chimp thinks is positive you'll be okay.


If you haven't read the book then I'm sure the chimp/computer thing might sound like I have multiple personalities lol.


Did anyone have a chimp moment today??


-P

@ suko shared this little gem with me:

QOTD "For traders, risking taking is your business. Your risk taking "muscle" needs to be worked out, stretched, developed. Just like any other muscle. Can't be a pro athlete if you lazy, weak, & out of shape." --@volfixer

still reading this book, been taking it slow so that i can implement what I'm reading,
started on a section on stress and think it could help out a lot of people on here ( me included)

I've been reading this entire book with a trading point of view on all subjects mentioned.

For this section I looked at it with a point of view that I'm in a losing trade and need to manage the stress in the correct ways.

Steps:
* recognizing that the chimp is reacting- why is this? due to primitive instincts that are trying to protect me( my money) and tell me if I need to fight,flight or freeze.. in many cases we begin to fight as that is our primitive instincts. Someone is taking my money then its natural to feel like you need to fight to get it back, this would be similar to a revenge trade moving stop losses or increasing position. All of this is a natural fear based reaction that your chimp is trying to protect you.

*slowing down your thinking(allowing the human to get involved)- the shit just went down its now time for you to figure out what happened and how you should react.. you trade is 5 pts from your stop loss what do you do? You need to pause for a second and reassure your self that everything is going to be alright so that you have time to think what you should be doing and not let your chimp take control and do something stupid.

*stepping back from the situation- now that you've paused for a second to let your computer start thinking you can begin the process of dealing with thats going on and see that maybe you entered on the wrong bar or there was a 2 legged pull back or maybe news just dropped and you shouldn't have been in that position.

*getting a perspective/the plan- now that you have noticed shit has hit the fan and you aren't going to let your chimp triple up on his/her position you can form a plan of what you are going to do. In this case it would most likely be wise let it hit your s/l and evaluate the trend/market once you don't have anything on your plate OR maybe you completely miss read the market and its time for a reverse entry ( all up to what your plan/edge is)

*reflection and activation- you released what you did wrong/right and now its time to act on what you have thought with a clear mind, either let it run/close/ reverse ect ect

* smile- you have now dealt with a tough situation that has caused stressed and you didn't let your chimp make a fool of you so now you need to give your self some praise so this starts to become a regular thing aka an autopilot. In regards to trading, even if you lost BUT kept your cool and didn't act up then you MUST praise your self.


now this is all just an example not a part of any edge/plan.

The key to this is to get your self a little space so you can think clearly now in the trading world all these decision's will need to be made very quick and that is what I think is very hard for a lot of us, we are dealing with instruments that move very fast and the correct decision needs to be made quickly.. even if you are trading a HTF when that stop is getting close to being hit the shit is going to hit the fan with your chimp and you'll need to be able to deal with it.

-P

Not trading the fomc day as they were usually my worst days, so I'm spending the day reading and currently I'm on the part about stress and I think a lot of us probably suffer from stress in one way or the other and I wanted to drop 2 paragraphs in here that might help.


Beating yourself up and guilt
Never beat yourself up if you handle stress poorly. This is a useless and damaging bad habit. As a bad habit is just a Gremlin we can remove it. Try smiling, relaxing and coming back with enthusiasm. You can only do your best, so accept it. Beating yourself up and feeling guilty are two very useless and destructive Gremlins. They never have anything constructive to offer. Remember, if you are not getting it right, then it is a hijack by the Chimp. It is not you failing!

“How” not “why”
Try not to keep asking “why” and then giving spurious explanations, e.g., “Why do I feel miserable all the time?” “Why” questions can be useful, but generally they are backward-looking and unconstructive. Instead ask the question “how.” These questions are planning questions and tend to be constructive. For example: “How will I deal with my own feelings and become happy?” is a constructive question and much better than “Why do I feel miserable and stressed?” “Why has this happened?” could be replaced by “I accept that this has happened, now how do I move forward?”

-P

Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

the book has you work through a bunch of questions about your dream, I thought these might be useful to anyone that is lost or having a hard time right now.

The answers are my own and would reccomend deleting them and filling in your own.

This could also be used for anything in life ( buying dream house/car/starting a new business etc)

Commitment screen for day trading :


First aspect broke down- what is needed for the job?


Essential: Essential items needed for day trading, Computer( mouse, keyboard, monitor etc) brokerage account, money, following the rules lined out in trading plan.


Significant: more than one monitor to keep an eye on different charts, quiet place to trade, patience , taming chimp, back up computers, tablet for keeping me “busy” while I wait on setups, TV for netflix when I need a break. Books to write down my notes/thoughts etc.


Desirable: a group of people to bounce questions off of ( fourm ) , understanding partner who supports your goals.


Second aspect broke down- what are the challenges you might face?


Hurdles: being patient and waiting for the market to come to me,
* Coping strategy : read a book on your tablet, watch netflix’s , get up and walk/play with dog. There is no order in when these should be used as it is up to you to gravitate to what will keep your happy and relaxed for a period of time.
Hurdles: taming chimp:
* Coping strategy: Gym at 6:30 am, workout tools on desk to get out any frustration/anger that could pop up. Goal with these is to keep my hands busy and calm my mind with something I can control ( reps/duration)
Hurdles: getting hungry
* Coping strategy: be sure to get enough after the gym ( minimum of 8 eggs, carbs dependant on day) Snacks ( almonds will be under desk)
Hurdles: Distractions
* Coping strategy: door to be shut when anyone else is in the house, if the dog is not sleeping on the office couch she is in her cage, make sure anyone in the house knows if they knock on the door and the sky isn’t falling they are getting shit on.
Hurdles: Incorrect mindset- thinking I should always be winning/thinking my riches will be made in a few hours/ thinking real traders trade 24/7 and breaks are for losers.
* Coping strategy: make sure your human is in control, if these thoughts start popping up then your chimp is in control and its automatically break time until you can regain your self, activities are: Netflix,walk/play with dog, tablet & workout tools at desk. Do any of these things for any amount of time until you are thinking straight again.


Barriers: getting stuck trading during incorrect times
* Coping strategy: all major news events/ releases are to be wrote down at the top of your journal with the time. FOMC days are no trade days.
Barriers: trading against the trend.
* Coping Strategy: this normally happens when I am rushed in the morning and do not get enough time to draw up the charts- The 6000 tick chart must have the HOY/COY/LOY all marketed out by hand, trend lines must be in place, make sure to add any thoughts to the chart ( TTR, HL/HH/LL/LH etc )


Pitfalls: Being exhausted
* Coping Strategy: Bed no later than 9:30 pm est, drink multiple bottles of water before & during the session.


Commitment screen questions:


Is it really a dream?


How important is this to you are your chimp?
* THE most important thing I have ever done
Do you and your chimp really want to achieve this?
* Yes , Human for the feeling of accomplishment and and fulfilling my dreams. Chimp for having the money( not the most healthy reason when it comes to trading )
What are the benefits of achieving your dream?
* Being able to say I did what I was going to do, free time to spend with friends/family etc , being able to live life on my terms, money, the joy of doing what I enjoy day in and out.
Are the benefits worth having , compared to the cost of getting there?
* Yes, already spent numerous years and thousands of dollars and would turn around and do it all again.


The Plans and requirements to fulfill the dream:


What plans have you made to achieve this?
* My trading plan, my chimp/stone of life, plans to keep my mind and body in tip top shape, plans dedicating when and where I will be working.
What have you tried in the past?
* I’ve tried similar approaches but have only been focused on one part and not the others ( mind,body, work space’s) over the years the approach has been very similar and always based on price action.
If it failed in the past why is this?
* I have failed in the past mainly due to a few items, poor mindset, inner negativity, to high of expectation & letting my chimp do what it wants.
What are you going to do that is different this time?
* The chimp is no longer in control, thinking with my human and not being controlled by emotions and desires.
What new strategies do you have for the future?
* Different t/p amounts
* Ways to control chimp
* Different expectations
* Only trading 1 market for the time being
* Find a market that fits me


What worked in the past?
* Trading price action
* Sticking to a small contract size
* Trading a certain TF


Have you made sure that your plans are watertight by letting someone else check them with you?
* Not 100% yet, partial parts of the system have been shared ( on to do list)


What are the essential, significant and desirable requirements for both human and chimp for this plan to work?
* These have been listed above


Do you have the essentials in place BEFORE you start?
* Yes


Hurdles, barriers and pitfalls


Have you made a list of the hurdles you have to jump?
* Yes


Do you have a strategy for jumping EACH hurdle?
* Yes ( coping strategy )


What will you have to sacrifice?
* Time, money , relationships that require to much attention, the “party” years of life


What are your plans for dealing with the downsides?
* Time: making sure that trading is always number one and deserves all the time, even when I am getting tired or stressed out, this is when the coping strategies come in hand so I can use my time in a productive manner
* Money: Once the savings number is hit I will be required to get a part time job,
* Relationships that require to much attention: Have been cut out
* Party year’s: Been there done that no longer need that


What stresses will you face in trying to achieve this dream?
* Loss of money
* Anxiety
* Anger
* Lack of patience


What Barriers do you think you will have to get around or negotiate on?
* Look above


What are your plans to avoid or get around each barrier?
* Look at barrier coping strategy


WHat pitfalls might you need to avoid?
* Look above


How will you recognize the pitfalls as you approach them?
* Look above at coping strategy


If you failed to reach your dream, how would you feel and how will you deal with this?
* Failure is another lesson to learn, I will not look at failure as not achieving my dream, it will be looked at as a stepping stone to my dream.


What will keep you going when you face problems?


How will you deal with failing to meet a goal or target?
* The issue will be analyzed in hopes to find the root of the problem. Once the problem is found a solution will be written down in the daily goal book.


Who do you have to help you deal with issues/problems you might face?
* Girl friend
* FIO


Is the person clear on why and how they can help you?
* With certain tasks yes


How will you measure progress?
* Grades in the goals journal
* And days when the plan is executed correctly


How willing are you to learn new strategies?
* Very but only when certain strategies are need to be learned ( like this with my mindset strategies) I am not looking to bounce from one strategy to another until the current one has shown a need for improvement.


How willing are you to change your approach?
* Very but as I stated above it will only change when improvements are needed.


If you find yourself wanting to give up your dream, ask yourself the following:
* Why do you want to give up?
* Can you change anything before you give up
* Can you find a different approach?
* Who have you talked it through with?
* What are the advantages to giving up your dream?
* What are the disadvantages to giving up your dream?
* What plans do you have for when you stop working toward the dream?


-P

I like your breakdown.Also, i purchased the "chimp" book.Im just a couple of chapters in,and there were some things noteworthy.

I like the way the chimp/human is explained.I actually looked up the poor fella who took a pole to the brain,watched a video on it.Very interesting!Basically, the pole took out the "human" part of his brain,and he actually lived.However, he was left with only the "chimp" part of his brain intact.He was a thoughtful, kind ,well spoken chap before the accident.After it,with the chimp in the drivers seat 100%, he became a nasty, foul mouthed jerk....full time.

indecision leads to anxiety....we all know the feeling.Not being decisive, hesitating,and watching a nice trade work...without me.I would rather be decisive and take a correct stop vs hesitating and missing a trade.This can be addressed by having a simple but specific trading/risk plan.

I totally relate to the paragraphs that speak about our chimp gaining total control,and finding myself in a predicament...only to wonder later wtf happened? What was i thinking?The chimp is all emotion

It occurred to me ,perhaps, there are 3 chimps in my brain.

This week i found myself looking inward,trying to calm the chimp(s),and when tense feelings arise, trying to just relax.Also, thinking about how to placate the chimp, so that the human side can chime in here and there...a work in progress to say the least.

Luckily,the the chimp likes exercise!
Bob...happy new year