zdo

Awesome posting! Many thanks to both of you. Does Primary Process developmentally end ? Or does it just go unconscious (and run in parallel) ?

FxGirl, Please see Post # 4 http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f37/change-thyself-7646.html#post91784

Hi all, fxGirl, from the 'Know thyself' thread re your post: “You said that you insist that traders develop their own systems, but for a different reason. I’d be interested in what that reason is." I have a co-mingled list of reasons but at the core, I think the following says it far better than I could ever say it (Note: all bracketed content is mine) From The Path of Least Resistance (revised, second edition 1989) Robert Fritz If you haven’t read this book I highly recommend it. If you have read it, time to ‘dust it off’ in the light of trading development…

LOL you're killing me Coming to a forum near you Touch yourself What is the state of the art for traders? It was mostly to show fxGirl how easy it is to start a thread. Separating them will just result in a different kind of mess than the usual messes we make :helloooo: Actually, while they all go together, there are important distinctions...

My impressions of that Tube: Noted a conspicuous absence of content about the importance of intrinsic interest, drive, passion, for an activity… maybe that’s so obvious it doesn’t need mention for most… ...And I see what they are getting at with the whole ‘talent is overrated’ theme. On many levels, one could say the talent IS the passion for it instead of the innate capacities to build skills... But I also think they may be discounting talent ( as defined above - finer innate capacities to build skills) just a little bit too much. For example, in the piece one of the coaches said something to the effect of “let me work with the weakest quarterback…and I’ll show you that talent is overrated”. Don’t they realize that ‘worst guy in camp’ still has more native QB talent than 99% of the humans on the planet?

“Change thyself” For traders, what is the ‘state of the art’?

Hi, fxGirl, re “whole body dysfunctions” One way of progressing here, while keeping it nervous system / wet ware oriented, is to see the whole of the nervous system as ‘the brain’ leads to Think Twice: How the Gut's "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being: Scientific American etc. While it is ok to just stay CNS oriented, I was taking it even further. Still in the realm of biology, the ‘brains’ (as whole nervous system) have little lasting modulation capacity over binding in the fascia ‘bags’, sensory motor amnesia, the ‘stress arousal syndrome’ in general, or even over residual muscle tension, etc. – all conditions whose absence is crucial to flow, frequent entry into the ‘zone’, or just plain ole performance at a high level. Then beyond empirical ‘biology’ (but still in and of the magno-electric spectrum) we are of many bodies. Some of them ‘non local’… Only a tiny % think these conditions have any effect at all on trading performance. I have found they have tremendous impact on trading (and all) performance. “Until we learn to manage our biology, our psychology will be overwhelmed.” Rande Howell Will get to your other comments as time and energy permits. Am also starting a ‘Change thyself’ thread. Please fire away. zdo

FxGirl, My first reaction - This is a ‘know thyself’ not a ‘change thyself’ thread. It was founded on curiosity about differing perspectives on the latest in ‘know thyself’ / 'aware thyself' stuff to deepen our understanding of humans in general for traders in particular, etc - with some license of a little bit of questioning and discussion of ‘dynamics’ btw. Our posts about “psycho dynamics”, “unconscious conflicts, fusional complexes, dissociation, etc” may be worthless to you and most likely millions of other traders – but I really appreciate them. So I’m not that sure we need to push all that aside in every single thread without exception, cut these amateur discussions, and just ‘change behaviors’… Besides, there are no threads on the internet anywhere about that . Let’s kill this thread now so we don’t interfere. Please forgive us TL. Hello ET. re: “if all we do is “be present”” That was sharing about my own labors and challenges of working with others. You’re a professional. I’m not. Let’s face it, I simply could never be a professional … Out the gate I’ve got incredibly low tolerance for the time it takes someone to even briefly talk about themselves, their ‘feelings’, etc. (and I love it when someone can get right to succinctly describing and working on the ‘behaviors’…) Just because I have to work issues like being nonjudgmental, or even listening at all, etc doesn’t mean in the least that in my sessions we don’t WORK hard start to finish. I push my peeps a whole lot damn harder than any ‘professional’ dares - and if you don’t believe me PM me and I’ll clear it with the one of them and you can ask him yourself what we did to help him change his own ‘brain’, remove unwanted states, etc…Ask him if there was any long term waiting around for insights… re: “suffering from varying degrees of brain dysfunction” Excellent point. I was hankering at this in ‘Other areas to consider’ post herein a while back However, I think if you stick with it you’ll ultimately find that it’s not just brain dysfunctions. It’s even better seen as whole body dysfunctions, of which changing the ‘brains’ is only a (major) part… re: “The prevailing way of thinking about trading begins with the assumption that you have to develop your own system” Au contraire! If we could accurately sample the trading population more likely we would find that > 80% have little interest in developing their own system (especially for the reasons I encourage it). Rather they are just looking for something that works right now – thinking that will sustain them across time. In addition, whether they are upfront about it or not, most trading coaches and psychologists would prefer a client assimilate the coach’s own system. All system vendors, including the ones who provide the ‘free’ psychology guidance, definitely operate with the opposite of that ‘assumption’. So I’m challenging your attribution that developing your own system is “he prevailing way of thinking” in the industry … and re “the only way to truly learn how the market works” : That is not anywhere near the top of the list of why I insist that traders should develop their own systems. On topic herein is not really about the ‘changing’ part of the process ( but content about that is for the most part accepted.) Rather, on topic is more about the ‘awareness’ parts of the process…In this thread, we are not "trying to impact at a limited, specific set of behaviors". And it really is ok for you to initiate threads fxGirl and contributions about ‘brain changing’ would be much appreciated here and from many others I’m sure… All the best

Thanks, Blowfish. Could you provide us references for the relavent articles?

Most likely. Look at declarations for most of the array sizes. You may have to oversize some of the arrays... hth

That was a flippant association. I know virtually nothing about fusion and just enough about attachment theory to be damaging. – but at that moment somewhere the two seemed obtusely connected. Object relations are fundamental to attachment styles (Ainsworth, et al) and… I was making guesses that less adaptive attachment styles would be more susceptible to the pitfalls of fusions – and I don’t know what those pitfalls are so this is really profound and groundbreaking right? Would welcome insights and references. thx. Some traders bring vulnerabilities to the table that most other traders can’t even imagine exist – evidenced by thousands upon thousands of disjointed trading psychology conversations on the internet where one player tries to reveal and process an issue and other players come back with one of the forms of ‘just be disciplined you dumbass’ John, Great questions – but to be honest, I’m having some trouble relating to them as a whole. Here’s why. At no charge I mentor one person at a time until s/he ends it and I don’t accept traders who don’t already have an edge. Example: In the relationship just previous to the current one I literally never knew exactly what his edge was… unbelievable to me too, in immediate curiosity almost slipped and asked a couple of times, but refraining helped keep the issues right in front of him *… In the active 14 month part of that relationship we never did anything but process polarities and conflicts and clear limbic dissonance. You ask what I “see” . To generalize - I see great POTENTIAL… and …. I see great DENIAL!. I see real risk taking! …and….I see desperately tenacious grips on some weird and unnecessary levels of homeostasis! I see brilliance! … and… I see some SERIOUSLY F’d UP mental ‘mapping’! I see strange otherness… and… I see a mirror Truth is more important than trading… It’s taken me a while but I’m finally getting at least adequate at simply being present for the other person. Feels good in the moment but ultimately a session is degraded if I’ve offered even the slightest tidbit of advice - even if asked. With varying success, I practice at narrowing to just one question per session that can’t be answered rationally or immediately, but will be answered in time…. not a teacher, not a coach, not even a mentor – mostly just a processing facilitator… So “Can you show them a way to find their edge ?” No I personally can not. I can offer some encouragement on line right here. But ultimately each individual must take on a Thomas Edision like identity and put on blinders to all else… I liken edges to pants. I know I don’t want to be wearing yours and hopefully you don’t want to be wearing mine. Just as important – they’re also not likely to fit! I’m hard core on this - Build your own base extremely independently and then only when that is accomplished look to others for refinements and enhancements. And run the ‘inner work’ in parallel…not as a remedial afterthought Whoops - even though I have taken all your questions to heart, this whole post turned out to be more of a rant to newbies than a solid response to you (and it only cost me ~4100 USD :missy: ) * I can pretty safely infer his entries were based on retracements in trend … the main point is over all those months we never explicitly discussed it, ie he never described it… Check my posts, I rarely discuss specifics about edges online either… “it's not what you say it's what they hear” anyways – makes most edge sharing a complete waste of time…

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPACS8ogqus]YouTube - Enroll Yourself in the Genius Factory[/ame]

JBW, Dug, et al, This is some real meat. Anyone got some Attachment Theory associations to add ? Evocative, conflict poducing, denial triggering, and resistance engendering and I have not even begun to work on it yet... Thanks a lot.

“Victory Destroys Knowledge” Dan John.

good question what are the ts 'rules' for creating range bars? and what interval are you using? #___ ? ticks? thx

“Flow thyself” For traders, what is the ‘state of the art’?

Many make trading just a simple ‘decision’ process. “There are just four kinds of bets. There are good bets, bad bets, bets that you win, and bets that you lose. Winning a bad bet can be the most dangerous outcome of all, because a success of that kind can encourage you to take more bad bets in the future. You can also lose a good bet, but if you keep placing good bets, over time, the law of averages will be working for you.” Larry Hite, a successful trend trader. As James has been banging at – how much do we really need to fathom the depths of our souls to do that? One short answer is – some of us more than others. Another short answer – it’s not how good you are but how good you want to be. “First things first” Another short answer – a trader who know’s himself at the beginning will be able to sort through the “trading education” material much more efficiently and quickly find edges that match his or her nature… Two specific questions triggered me to broaden the questioning out to the old general saw ‘know thyself’ stuff and start the thread. In my own processes, I noticed varying awareness of when I was susceptible to making trading mistakes / poor decisions and was asking the horrible question of ‘why?’ Then, in another trader who I mentor, I observed a cyclic variability in his subjective awareness of incentives which really had impact on his consistency and (maybe falsely) concluded that sustaining a consistently sufficient level of in the moment awareness of incentives is more important than what the actual incentives are or even being aware of the particulars of one’s incentives. Anyways, those questions reminded me again of the whole ‘know thyself’ area… So moving the questioning a little bit - What is the best of ‘know thyself’? …a few responses to some of your posts Could you expand on these a little bit? Thanks. First, I would modify "Every one gets what the want from the market". to "Every one gets what they intend from the market". My experience with mentoring described above convinced me that for many, it’s not the broad incentives that are at issue. Rather, it’s the subtleties and vagaries of keeping them in awareness during one’s ‘trading session’… see first things first comments above and below. This “only need to know the bits” sort of goes to an approach of doing your very best with what is conscious and assuming the unconscious will take care of itself ? re: That makes workable sense and 700 gurus can’t be wrong! But, for me, that order proved to be sub optimal. After years of faithfully doing just that, something a Jungian therapist turned trader once said triggered me to take a much more deliberative and balanced approach. I learned to build a practice of immediately following self work with edge work and of immediately following edge work with self work…building a habit of immediately following progress in either ‘side’ with serious, value finding (not problem solving) questions about the most recent progression’s implications to the other side. Because often there is no immediate apparent connection with the other, (ie for me, JBWt’s “mirrors” are more often than not, difficult to attenuate to), this kind of work is more arduous - but it brings geometric returns. Your 'system' is found within you as much as it is found objectively. re metaphors in general, and I’ve grown quite wary of all the trading metaphors I ever had. For the last 10 years or so, my practice is to kill all my trading metaphors when they occur to me. I rarely encourage others to do the same and paradoxically, the practice has actually made me more ‘compassionate’ about other’s trading metaphors… Other areas to consider - Personal genetics. Not many ‘subjective’ ways to know thyself on this one except by tendencies. I theorize that we may have several distinct genetically ‘determined’ variances in amygdale reactivity and influence. If you watched the Neurology and Art video, subtle cross wiring in neighborhoods of the brain could result in patterns in one trader that another trader simply has no chance of ever relating to or understanding. I suspect there are several, if not many, other distinct genetic typings for perception idiosyncrasies, managing uncertainty, even possibly whether we are with trend or contrary, etc. But testing for these markers not so far fetched anymore. Biofeedback - realtime HEG, GSR, HRV – also not so far fetched anymore Enculturation. Enculturation is a fairly fat term for what goes on in this area. The simple term ‘Learning’ could be used but I prefer enculturation because it alludes more to the slippage from flow a child surrenders to - to join the culture. fxGirl mentioned meditation. From the ‘east’, Lao Tzu councils us to unlearn all the reactive patterns we learned through the years and relearn through observation. This way we understand why it is best to do a certain thing based on certain conditions. ..."neurons that fire together, stay together." so much of what we do in meditation, mindfulness, qi gong, etc is deconstructing previously wired sympathetic responses and ‘wiring’ / grooving new parasympathetic pathways...once conditioned responses weaken we can truly interact with the actual environment …”If we react the same way to similar conditions we actually are establishing something close to an instinct. And I think that this is not good… ” some taoist bum. I am opening a sibling thread - similar title... All the best and again thanks for all the posts.

Barely on topic…re state of the "art" 'cross wiring...' ‘staggering diversity…” ‘difference between interest and passion…’ “explaining an enigma with a metaphor...” Biology, Psychology, Art – V. S. Ramachandran – " Neurology & Art " ..."neurons that fire together, stay together.", etc making a case for vsa-like conspiracies in what is produced for traders to see? I appreciate all the posts. It was not intentionally a "drive by OP". Will make some time to respond and hopefully contribute…

“Know thyself” For traders, what does that include? What is the ‘state of the art’?

Gambling Study: How Winning at Poker Causes Greater Risk - TIME

eurotrader, Please post a screenshot Thx. zdo (and Tams )

fxLegalEagle Try Currency Correlations etc. Most charting packages have correlation functions if you want to get more granular or see it historically. hth

FXGirl, Thanks. Excellent criteria. I slightly disagree with the first and second though. Number 2 first - in many cases, the 'better' / higher profile school names select for research phd candidates more than on clinical potential. They come out with acceptable assessment and diagnostic preparation but not with potential for doing consistent high quality treatment. The types of intelligence good for playing the phd game is not necessarily the intelligence needed for being an effective therapist On the first one - Statistically you're right. Many MA's are hacks. However - raw talent, aptitude, and passion are more crucial to high capacity than credential in any field - including psychology. For example, by far and away the best therapist in our town is an old crone lcsw. She runs circles around all the phd's and they know it... Also the quality of ongoing mentoring and development is much more important to 'depth' than the initial academic work and supervision... I guess what I'm saying is one can't go 'wrong' applying the first two criteria but one could go 'more right' by not... Looking forward to your thoughts on finding / matching therapists for traders. Maybe open a new thread for it. zdo

Reciprocal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia RECIPROCAL (3) same as 1 / (3) same as .33333... hth

...unverified pseudocode Plot1( DataSeries1 - DataSeries2, "SprdDiff" ) ; Plot2( AverageFC(DataSeries1 - DataSeries2, Length), "SprdAvg" ) ; // or Plot2( AverageFC(Plot1, Length), "SprdAvg" ) ; // or ... hth