Rande Howell

This post describes the process that my book, “Mindful Trading: Mastering Your Emotions and the Inner Game”, uses to disrupt fear and develop a peak performance state of mind for traders. To learn more about the book, click here. To learn about the 8 roadblocks to peak performance trading, click here. _________________________ _ If you accept the assumption that your trading performance is rooted in your deepest beliefs about the self, you then also accept full responsibility for the beliefs you hold that limit the success of your trading. This is where you recognize that you trade your beliefs. Most traders trade from self limiting beliefs that erode their trading account and their financial dreams. It is not your fault that you are born into and adapted to these beliefs, but it is your responsibility to change and develop core beliefs about the self that drive a higher level of trade performance. These self limiting beliefs cannot be changed by superficial means. Unfortunately, because survival is based on fear and avoidance, our biology, our histories, and the formation of our sense of self conspire against the accidental formation of belief systems that trade effectively. Fear has to be mastered. This is pivotal to the development of the potential trader in you. How do you actually master the fear and self doubt that are embedded into your deepest beliefs and, therefore, prevent effective trading? It starts with acknowledging that you have a problem with fear contaminating your trading mind. And you also must come to an understanding that, until you learn to manage your fear, your trading will not improve. It is at this moment that learning how to deal with fear and transcending it becomes possible. It also requires a holistic approach. There are a number of different aspects to affect a long term change of beliefs, but rarely do you see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. When coordinated in a systematic way, you can build a set of tools and skills that transcend each singular skill. Let’s look at them. Stage One – Breathing: Managing the Fear Response to Threat In trading, fear arises when you experience threat. And fear powerfully motivates you to avoid discomfort. You will be triggered to run, hide, freeze, or submit in response to the threat (your trading). As you can imagine, this presents a serious problem for the trader’s state of mind. Suddenly the trader is possessed by fear and everything is downhill after that. Without the development of specific skills to manage the triggering of fear, the impulse of fear often sweeps the mind away in a cloud of self doubt and reprisal. This is the first step that has to be mastered – emotional regulation. Without this skill acquisition, getting to the deeper psychological re-organization of the core beliefs of your inner trader remains only a remote possibility. Understanding emotions, and how to manage them, becomes a foundational skill to the developing trader. All emotions, including fear, have a biological signature that includes the very breath you take. Fear, as an emotion, is not to be confused with a feeling. A feeling is the subjective experience of the emotion. An emotion is biological in nature – it overwhelms our psychology. Because it is biological, it requires a certain kind of breathing to support and maintain the emotional state. Check this out the next time you are trading, in particular the specific times in your trading day that you experience fear. For instance, this could be just turning your computer on, evaluating set –ups, entering and managing a trade, or exiting a trade. Without this breathing style, the fear cannot be maintained. This is the key to initial emotional state management. Learning to observe your breathing and to interrupt fear-based breathing and replacing it with diaphragmatic breathing is the first stage to emotional state management. Because your breathing has become a deeply embedded pattern, learning to breathe in such a way that produces a calm state of mind has to be re-learned specifically for the rigors of trading. It is the very first foundational skill that must be taught in preparation for emotional mastery. Breathing is a tool, a band aid; it is not the change agent. But it is an essential tool to be used to re-develop the trader. Stage Two – SafePlace: Taking Fear Off-line in the Mind Once you have learned to physically manage the arousal of fear in the body, fear as a state of mind can be addressed. Instead of a calm, relaxed mind, most traders experience highly agitated states of mind. These must be interrupted and changed before the mind can be worked with. Otherwise you will stay stuck with an unruly mind that cannot be managed. This is where visualization techniques can be of immense value (again, not solely). It is by linking calm, peaceful memories to emotion that the trader can train the mind to experience a sense of safety and calm – rather than the chaos of an untrained mind. This is a higher order of emotional state management. Now you have calmed the arousal of fear in the body so that you can manage the mental aspects of emotional states. In the Ignite Your Spark Training for Traders, this mind-calming skill is called SafePlace. A calm mind, like breathing to produce a relaxed body, is not "the answer". It is simply one piece of the puzzle that locks in another skill that will be necessary in order to get to the deeper psychology of your beliefs. Without self soothing, calming the mind down so that it can be worked with is difficult. With it, a new skill becomes possible. This skill is Mindfulness. Stage Three – Mindfulness: You and Your Thoughts Are Not the Same With a calm mind, you can begin to slow down your thoughts so that you can hear them. Instead of avoiding your discomforts (so common in trading), you can become witness to them. No longer are they representations of who you are – instead, they become an internal dialog to be observed. The internal dialog is not “you” – it is simply thoughts in your mind. You have given them power. Becoming witness to your thoughts is called mindfulness. As this skill is developed, there is a separation between the thought and the observer of the thought that is central to the development of mindfulness. You recognize that you and your thoughts are not the same. This is a critical moment in your development. Mindfulness is the door that opens to a whole new world of understanding your mind and your identity as one potential organization of the self Stage Four – The Internal Dialog: Your Mindless Identity Mindfulness is a powerful tool. It allows you to become the observer of your thoughts rather than to stay in the self limiting beliefs perpetuated by the historical internal dialog that masquerades as thoughts in the mind. This internal dialog is the voice of your self limiting beliefs. It is the “You can’t win”, “You’ll never make it”, “You’re not good enough”, and the “You’re going to lose” that fills your self doubt and fear-based trading. This aspect of the internal dialog in the Ignite Your Spark Training program for Traders is called the Inner Critic. It is not “you”; it is simply an element in your mind that has taken over your trading mind. The other component that you, as an evolving trader, need to become aware of is the voice of your fear. This scared, child-like part of the self reactively dances with your inner critic. This is experienced is hesitating to pull the trigger, fearfulness while in a trade, or feeling dejected after a bad trade. The development of mindfulness as a skill allows you to separate your sense of identity from the historical conversations that dominate the internal dialog. Once your identity is no longer fused with the internal dialog by fear, much more powerful elements of the self become available in your awareness. This is when the re-organization of the inner trader becomes possible. Stage Five – Freed From Fear, the Mind as a Committee is Re-organized Freed from fear, you are capable of developing your potential for peak performance trading. You are able to develop inner resources that have always been there, but are now available to your awareness. Now you are able to bring forth the inner resources of discipline, patience, courage, and impartiality. In Jungian archetypal language, the Ruler (discipline), the Caregiver (patience and compassion), the Warrior (courage), and the Sage (impartiality) can be brought into your awareness. They are brought out of your mindlessness into the light of your awakening awareness. By developing these inherent potentialities within you, you change the composition of your internal dialog. It becomes richer, more nuanced. And your mind becomes like a committee – far more than the self limiting internal dialog. The committee now includes the discipline, patience, courage, and impartiality to trade from a peak performance state of mind. This is the transformation that the trader is seeking. There will always be an internal struggle going on within the trader’s mind. But you do not have to face it in fear. By developing the inner trader through these five stages, the trader can master his emotions and the inner game – particularly now that he knows one is going on in his mind. Equipping Yourself for the Internal Struggle in Your Mind Self limiting beliefs do not simply give up and go away. They are tenacious. As you develop your mind’s trading committee, there will be continuing conflict. The difference is that now you have the tools and skills to confront your self doubt, fear, grandiosity, and impulsiveness and master it. It is the development of this awareness through mindfulness that opens the possibility of transformation. In much the same way that 95% of diets to lose weight do not work long term because they do not address the root causes of weight gain, so too most traders continue to lose money. It is in recognizing that a surface change in your trader’s psychology does not work long term that the door to deeper psychological change opens up. To change self limiting beliefs, a holistic, integrated approach is needed...one that integrates how body, mind, and spirit work cohesively together. Leaving one part out takes away a part of the puzzle that is required to build a unified method for developing a trader’s state of mind. Putting them together produces a methodology that gives you the edge in re-organizing your psychology into a peak performance state of mind. J. Rande Howell http://www.tradersstateofmind.com

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, "Mindfulness: Mastering Your Emotions and the Inner Game". This is about the intersection of Fear, Uncertainty, Probability, and State of Mind and its impact on your trading. Fear Based Trading: Wrestling Control of the Mind From Limiting Pattern ______________________ "There's someone in my head but it's not me." Brain Damage – Pink Floyd ___________________ Diary of a Trader Waking Up to the Internal Dialog “It's never going to happen for you. You’re never going to see the performance you see trading simulated with your real money account,” erupted the intrusive thoughts into Bill’s awareness. It sounded so final. And it sounded so on target that I believed it without question – yet part of me fought back. “Whoa! Where did that come from?” astonished, Bill jotted the thought down into his trade log. Later while he reviewed the thought and emotion log portion of his trade log, he realized, “I've obviously have been dealing with that voice for years, but, out of my discomfort, I’ve avoided dealing with it.” The distinction of separating thought from identity was opening up a whole new can of worms for Bill. Now he was being asked to become mindful of the different characters present in his thoughts. “This Mindfulness stuff is beginning to make a whole lot of sense. I had no idea that so much was going on in my mind while I’m trading – I just thought it was my dumb thoughts,” Bill recounted. And as he reflected on this new revelation, he discovered another voice also. Focusing hard he thought, “That’s the voice that continually tells a very discouraged part of me, "you’re gonna do it, keep fighting, keep going, it’s gonna happen." But it’s not as loud as the Inner Critic and it gets drowned out. When I make mistakes or have a losing trade, the Inner Critic berates me, "you’re an idiot; you’re a stupid ass." But then there is an accompanying voice that says, "It’s ok Bill. No big deal. Making a mistake, and losing on a trade is part of the game. You have the skill set to make it up. Forgive yourself and let’s get in on this next trade." But the critical voice is louder and drowns it out. I think the fear of pulling the trigger on my analysis stems from me not wanting to make a mistake and be wrong. Being wrong adds fuel to the Inner Critic’s beratement of me – gives it confirmation. “It’s this battle going on between this Inner Critic and this part of me that wants to prove himself – and the critic is winning. This fearful part of me seems to want to prove himself to this critical part of me – to prove that he matters; that he has purpose. But no matter what he does, it’s never good enough. It just goes on and on. And I get exhausted by the internal struggle and my trading day gets blown up,” came Bills analysis of this internal trading dialog going on his mind. The most prevalent thought to pop up in my mind is that I'm basing my self worth on my success or lack of as a trader. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I want the accumulation of things and power that trading can give me. I want the recognition of family, friends, co-workers. I want them to see that the years of sacrifice reaped a reward. The crazy thing about this is that I'm a well liked and loved person by these people with or without trading but obviously its not good enough. I also want the recognition for my professional and financial success which I still haven't attained through my trading. I do have a sense of entitlement. I worked my ass off. I gave up everything to go after this dream. 6 years of sacrifice, thousands and thousands of hours over this 6 year period of studying and honing my craft. Sitting in front of this damn computer and I still haven't gotten what I think I deserve. The thoughts are there, but I’m not being swept away by them as much as I used to. But I don’t feel detached from them either. The difference is that I’m not observing them and am aware of them. And I’m beginning to realize that I have been mindless to this conspiracy running around in my head. Because of my blindness to it, it has been able to sabatoge my efforts with relative ease – I’ve been asleep at the wheel. I haven’t been directing my life. This person inside my head that is not “me” has. This has to stop.” Using Mindfulness to Uncover the Internal Dialog Bill is making progress in his evolution as a trader. At first he sees no difference between his thoughts and who he is. Now, it is beginning to be different for him – and his trading. He is waking up to the powerful, and unseen, forces that drive his trading – his hidden beliefs about himself and his worth. It is these unseen beliefs, showing up as conversations in the mind, that has stymied Bill’s trading for years. Remember from previous chapters how beliefs become embedded into your neural circuitry. Once wired into, they become the oh-so-familiar voices that you come to identify as “you”. Because they are so familiar, the brain pushes them out of your awareness – where they bias your perception without your knowledge. It is here, out of your awareness, which they blow up your trading. It is through these unseen and unexamined assumptions, that we interpret and understand the world. In Bill’s case, and 95% of traders, it produces mediocrity. To break free of these unexamined assumptions we must first become aware of them. Becoming mindful of these shadowy, hidden, conversations within the self is the first milestone of waking up and becoming the trader you can become. No amount of fundamental or technical analysis will substitute for awareness of the self organization you currently exist as. In the vignette above, taken from a trader’s psychological trading log, you can see this in bold relief. Bill has experienced powerful financial success before he began trading. But in the course of trading for six years, he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars before he concluded he needed help with his psychological organization. He has a methodology trading coach. And when he is trading simulated, he is a master trader. Yet, when real money is risked, he is possessed by an internal struggle of self doubt after losing nearly all his life savings. Now, far removed from the large-and-in-charge persona he had developed to cover a deep sense of inadequacy, he discovers a fight going on within him. That internal struggle has been going on for his entire life. But it did not come to the surface until he began trading. It is the structure of this deeper fear that he needs to become mindful of. Even then outside of his awareness in his mindlessness, the large-and-in-charge mask he wore drove his trading. The problem was that underneath it all was a sense of unworthiness and inadequacy that he had never had to address – until trading. This is his deeper fear – deeper than his fear of loss -- that he has been avoiding for years. It is inescapable in trading. In sales he learned he could bluster his way through – producing a false sense of self confidence that he hid from others and himself. Like a surgeon’s knife, trading exposed it. What, exactly, did trading expose about Bill internal landscape as it relates to trading? People avoid dealing with their psychological demons very successfully before coming into trading. People, including you, distract themselves, they busy themselves, they bluster, they drink, they talk sports, they talk business, or they con themselves. They even do this as they enter trading. They talk a game. Then they discover, to their dismay, that the very psychological demons that they invested heavily in to avoid before trading are now stalking them. In trading there is no room to hide from our self limiting beliefs. You find them in your fear based trading. Now that they can not be avoided, let’s look and see what you have been avoiding. Locating and Deconstructing the Internal Dialog As Bill builds the skills of breathing, relaxation, self-soothing, and mindfulness – he learns how to slow down his thinking and discover powerful hidden beliefs that shape his trading – behind his back. When he first begins, his thoughts appeared to him as a blur (after all, he has avoided getting to know this part of himself for a long time). As he developed relaxation and mindfulness skills, the speed of his thoughts began to slow down. First they showed up as a blur and were of little interest to him. His belief was that all he had to do was learn fundamental, and particularly, technical analysis. From here, he would be able to trade and make buckets of money to fulfill his dreams. The problem was that when he went from simulated trading to actually risking his capital, his trading fell apart. His putting capital at risk triggered his deeper fears of inadequacy and failure as a human being. This very fear he was able to cover up by developing a large-and-in-charge persona. Trading was merciless in exposing this hidden belief. His trading coach encouraged him to explore his psychology as it related to trading. But Bill, and most traders, brushed this suggestion aside believing (self deception) that they had the psychological part down – all they needed was methodology. They were going to find the Holy Grail, and it was going to be in methodology after trading platforms failed to deliver the goods. From many years of avoidance of discomfort, they ignored the sage advice. They ignored their thought life. They ignored it until it smashed them in the face. This can come in the form of ten’s of thousands of dollars lost or, in Bill’s case, hundred’s of thousands of dollars lost. For Bill, and for you as a trader, thoughts have to be slowed down from the blur used to avoid the discomfort of unsettling thoughts. That is what Bill has learned to do by following the skills management guide presented in this book and through training. As he developed the skills to slow down the blur of racing thoughts, they still raged by as a torrent of uncontrollable thoughts. But, even at this speed, he could begin to feel the emotion and meaning attached to the thoughts he had been trying to ignore. With a little more work, he was able to slow them down until he could identity them. That is where Bill is in the diary vignette from the start of this chapter. This moved him from simply using emotional management tools to calm the self down to using observation skills to detect the dominant emotion/thought/belief patterns (internal dialog) driving his thought life – and his trading life. And it was not a pretty picture. He could understand why he had avoided it for most of his life. It made him uncomfortable. Apparently they had been an active underworld going on beneath his awareness that had powerful impact on his sense of self and his decision making – particular when risk was involved. What was this underworld of thought composed of? One thing I want to make clear as we enter this section. All of us have an internal dialog. It is inescapable. We are all faced with challenges or struggles in life – they are unavoidable. Trading exposes these challenges, and your adaptation to them, like a mirror in your dressing room. The mirror in your dressing room reveals all the warts and blemishes that you attempt to hide from the world and from yourself. The difference is that in trading, you are forced to look into the mirror and acknowledge your incompetencies. The very things you have been avoiding in real life. In real life, you can avoid the mirror by busyness and all sorts of distraction. You can cloth yourself so that you, nor anyone else, see the flaws. In trading, your trading account is the barometer, not the avoidance mechanisms of the mind. Here, we are looking at thought patterns that exist within all humans – this is what I am calling the internal dialog. Often you distance yourself from the discomfort of these self beliefs showing up as thoughts in your mind. They become painfully real and can become debilitating in trading. That is actually the good news because it actually forces you to examine what your really believe about yourself and trading. As long as you continue to avoid them, they will own your trading. And you forfeit the possibility of learning from your mistakes. If you recognize that your trading performances are a reflection of the beliefs that you bring to trading, you are in a much better position of finding them. Most traders give lip service to a belief they “should” hold, but when trading performance does not match the surface belief, they do not delve deeper into their personal psychology. Here they would find their core beliefs that they, most likely, hide from themselves. Mindfulness is the methodology I teach to help people to get to this level of understanding of themselves and their trading. Here change in performance becomes an indicator of change in core belief about the self as a trader – and as a human being. To learn more about the book,Mindfulness: Mastering Your Emtions and the Inner Game or to attempt a free webinar, go to http://www.tradersstateofmind.co m

by J. Rande Howell Despite their knowledge of trading, the vast majority of traders experience fear on a level that compromises their capacity to trade effectively. This problem eventually comes to a boiling point somewhere in the evolution of a trader. At this turning point they either leave trading, continue to suffer losses, or begin to take a closer look at themselves. They recognize that the Holy Grail is not “out there” in their system or methodology. The trouble lies within them. And the culprit is fear. The solution also lies within them. So much energy is then focused on mastering fear in trading (rightfully so) that another question is never raised. What then? The battle has never “been out there” in the markets. When you learn how to manage fear, do you suddenly become a consistently winning trader? The answer is rarely. Mastering fear is the start of a journey. As jarring as this realization may be to a trader battling his fears, this is only the first, and foundational, step into the transformation of the self required to become a successful trader. Learning to deal effectively with fear opens the door to re-training the mind for peak performance trading. Ultimately, a trader perceives and acts based on his deepest beliefs about the self. This is where potential lies. Fear blocks development of potential beyond the trader’s self limiting beliefs about self. But what are the tools and skills a trader needs to harness to develop his potential as a trader? Mindfulness: Developing Awareness of Your Potential Until the spell of fear is broken, getting to the potential that lives within remains closed to you. Even when the trader learns to regulate fear so that it does not sweep him away and he can establish a calm mind, how does he locate the discipline, patience, courage, and impartiality to which he is blind? The answer to this question is crucial in order to move from mediocrity to successful trading - the answer is that he develops awareness through the skill of mindfulness. For all the talk about mindfulness, people remain vague about what qualities constitute mindfulness. Simply put, mindfulness is the capacity to be aware of (observe) your thoughts, your biases, and your beliefs – not as who you are, but as what your sense of identity has become fused to. Further, in mindfulness you become witness to your thoughts, beliefs, and biases. And a startling discovery is made: you and your thoughts, biases, and beliefs are not the same. They are simply one possible organization of the self. You were born into a history of thoughts, biases, and beliefs that your brain, through adaptation, embedded into neural circuits that became your beliefs. You do not have beliefs – they have you. Your beliefs are firmly rooted into the assessment and pattern-making machine called your brain long before you can think or reflect back on what you believe. This is called your historical internal dialog. When you experience fear or impulse in trading, it is this self limiting internal dialog that has trapped you. You can easily recognize its presence and the resulting unfiltered opinions and judgments by walking down a crowded street and “people watching”. Notice that automatic assessments fly into your perception as you watch people. Before you know it, entire stories are made up that “explain” circumstances as you simply watch people passing by. There is no proof for your automatic assessments – they simply show up as your thoughts. And, even if there is no proof to support your thoughts, biases, and beliefs, you (without thinking) are still influenced to believe these seemingly random thoughts. In trading, traders actually act on their ungrounded assessments all the time. This form of mindlessness is dangerous. Think about the last time you experienced worry as you were trading (say, pulling the trigger after a string of losses). In the emotional state of worry the trader fixates his mind on perceived negative potentialities. The potentialities to which he becomes fused are no more true than any other thought running through his mind – but they are not questioned because they are not observed. When in mindlessness, the trader does not know to question the automatic negative assessments that rise from the emotional state of worry. Your thoughts represent core beliefs about the self that exist in the background of your trader’s awareness. Until the trader (you) learns to bring his thought life into awareness, he remains a victim to historical and automatic ways of perceiving the world – whether they are effective or not. In developing mindfulness as a psychological skill specifically for trading, you begin to examine your thoughts in the midst of trading, looking for the underlying biases and self limiting beliefs (beyond what the emotional state of fear feels like) that drive your trading and that blind you to other possibilities. Mindfulness has to be developed as a practice because your brain, once the thoughts become familiar, pushes them to the background of your awareness where they are out of sight. And what you are blind to about yourself in trading will come back and bite you. A Trader Comes Face to Face With His Self Limiting Beliefs What does this look like in real life? A trader comes to me with a problem. He has been trading for ten years and is only marginally profitable, even though he knows his methodology backwards and forwards. And after ten years, he is considering giving up trading, despite his passion for it, because he cannot ask his wife and family to support his folly anymore. He actually feels shame. He discovers (no surprise here) that he has a fear of losing that compromises his trading. After he is able to regulate his fear, he is then able to discover the self-limiting beliefs which imprison him. And these self-limiting beliefs show up in his thinking as a motivation “not to lose” rather than a motivation to win. And to insure his set ups are geared “not to lose”, he only puts in orders at a price at which they are frequently not filled. He ends up with small losses, but few wins. He also sees that many of his trades would have been winners if only he had not asked for the rock bottom price. He knows this, but he keeps getting swept away by this historical conversation in his mind about “not losing”. Then, in the process of developing mindfulness, he makes a startling discovery – he feels responsible (compelled actually) to take care of his parents and his wife financially as a way to feel worthy. He has tied his sense of worthiness to his performance as a trader. His trading performance has become a measure of his personal sense of worth. This is a set up for disaster. And here is the recipe: As he watches and evaluates set ups, the trader suddenly experiences a flashing image of a trade going bad on him. Simultaneously, he feels this as a shrinking in his gut. Then he becomes aware that his thoughts have turned to self doubt – “are you sure?”. The internal conversation of hesitation takes over his trading performance. Out of this, he seeks a rock bottom price or more confirmation before he will enter the trade. He is now trading “not to lose”, which insures he will lose. In this trader’s case, it means that his loss will be small if he gets into the trade at all. This is the anatomy of an emotional hijacking. Most traders have these trains of thoughts streak past them as a blur. They are never examined, nor confronted. In mindfulness training, the trader learns how to slow his thinking down so that he becomes aware of what thoughts are actually coursing through his mind as he trades. This is important. If these thoughts are fear based, they will produce a self fulfilling prophesy that dooms the trader’s state of mind into victimhood – a bad choice for trading. Once you can emotionally regulate yourself, mindfulness becomes open to you as an evolving trader. In the case of the trader in the vignette above, he realized he had been gripped by an internal belief that swayed him to trade NOT TO LOSE, rather than trading to win. The self limiting belief, “you’ll lose if you risk”, was unmasked and he could challenge the fear behind it. In confronting this embarrassing self limiting belief about himself, the trader developed a new, empowering belief about his trading –“I am a manager of risk. It is probable that I will win.” This belief, once it was firmly rooted into his core beliefs, led to much more productive trading. With Mindfulness, Beliefs become More Fluid As a trader develops his capacity to be mindful, he begins to understand that most of our assumptions are really just automatic assessments that have taken on the power of belief over time. As we free ourselves from our self limiting beliefs, we open ourselves to re-organizing our beliefs so that we become far more powerful users of our platform and methodology. Trading takes on new meaning for our lives. It too, becomes a tool for the creation of an evolving life. This process begins with a trader developing the skills of emotional regulation. No change in self limiting beliefs is possible until then. Next, mindfulness is developed as a skill so that the trader becomes an observer of his internal struggles rather than its victim. Later, the trader learns how to move beyond the prison of his self limiting beliefs and find powerful parts of himself that he uses to rebuild the "committee of the mind". Instead of the trader’s mind being controlled by fear and self doubt as he trades, he is able to bring to his trading the elements of himself that give rise to disciplined, impartial, and courageous thought. Trading becomes a very different experience. The mindful trader is able to embrace uncertainty from a very different, and effective, state of mind. If you would like to learn more, come to a free webinar that can be found on http://www.traderstateofmind.com. There is much to explore on this website. J. Rande Howell

In a perfect world unimpedded by self limiting beliefs learned before you can think, your comments are on target. The trader in this post is real and is an excellent technical trader -- but is limited by a deeply held belief of NOT LOSING. He's been trading for 10 years with a consistent performance of NOT LOSING -- but not winning much either. He was quite shocked to learn how this belief had been underneath his radar and comtaminated his methodology. Once he freed himself from this belief, acquired as he was growing up, he rapidly moved into profitable trading. He has always been a disciplined trader. The problem was that the discipline was based on fear, rather than calm authority. And this is where most traders trade. From their fears. And that's what they find. You can change strategy til you are blue in the face, but it also needs to be accompanied by a change in state of mind. In this case, the trader discovered he had been trading from a sense of victimhood and his entry points and price were designed to NOT LOSE on an unconscious level. No amount of change of strategy is going to win over deeply held beliefs. That is why the vast majority of trading is in your head, not in your methodology. You have to drive that vechile of methodology with a well trained mind. That is exactly what this trader learned. Rande Howell

A trader recently asked meabout the connection between emotional state and the state of mind that drives a trader's performance So... what is the connection? Let's take a look: What do you mean by the quote on page 21; "You do not determine what reality is “out there”; rather you fuse with possibilities that you bring forth into the world – and this becomes your reality". Good question, and I'm glad you asked. This actually happened to two clients of mine who used to trade side by side. Two traders look at the same set up and "see" different possibilities in the trade. One needs more confirmation because he fears losing money -- so he hesitates on the side line of the trade. He wants a better price so he can minimize the possibility of loss. Even when he decides to enter the trade, his order is not filled because no one would sell at the rock bottom price. The trade shot up and the trader did not lose -- he also did not gain. The world "out there" that he saw was fearful and he was focused on the possibility of not losing. This is the realityhe brought forth into the world. It did not exist "out there" -- it existed in his mind as the beliefs that colored his preception of "the world". Meanwhile the other trader, sitting right beside him, seesthe set up completely differently and brings forth a different world based on this beliefs. He sees the set up and gets the confirmation from his methodology. He "sees" a winning trade if he gets in at a reasonable price. His order is filled, not at the lowest price, but within the price struture his methodology calls for. His belief is that the probability of a winning trade is on his side -- absolute price does not matter in his perceptual map of the market. He places his order and rides a winning trade and gets out before his target because he sees the trade going against him. He understands this as what the market is willing to give him at this moment. It's not right or wrong -- only his perception of market forces. A profitable transaction. Did he leave money on the table -- he does care about how he "feels". He is trading to win -- while his partner was trading to not lose. Neither belief position is "out there" existing as hard, cold reality. Both existed as possibilities in the minds of the trader. Both brought forth different realities from the same situation -- onlydifferent eyes seeing the same thing side by side. One trader became so fused with "not losing" that that is exactly what he did. While his friend was fused with calm, impartial authority -- and he brought forth that possibility into being. Both realities are real in that they happened. But both eventualities were "brought forth" into being by the beliefs that each trader was fused to. The winning trader, by the way, is a client of mine. He had begun to take responsibility for the way he interpreted (his beliefs) the market. And, in his re-organized belief system, he had challenged a hidden belief he was held hostage by -- that the market (the world) was a dangerous place, and you have to be careful. The re-constructed belief (based on a lot of emotional labor) was the the market does care and has no intent in any direction toward me. Freed from his fear, he could look and explore what the market would give him. Both men brought forth realities based on the fusion of belief and possibility. One was mindful of his beliefs, while the other was mindless of the beliefs that were interacting with the infinite possibilities of the market -- and creating self limiting eventualities. The trade NOT TO LOSE guy is now a client of mind and is doing the emotional labor to re-organize his belief system. This is why traders need to learn how to emotionally regulate their emotions and develop a trader-centric way of observing their thoughts and beliefs -- they are creating the reality you are experiencing. Not your sytem or methodology. Does this help? the best, Rande

zdo You are right. Freedom of emotion is the aim of the process I use. It is not freedom from emotion. When people recognize that emotion is inescapable, manifests in the body whether they like it or not, and that the feeling element of emotion does, in fact, direct the quality of our thinking -- they begin to wake up to how to manage the creation of their lives and trading accounts very differently. It moves from the allure of quick fixes to understanding that the notion of the self that a person has settled into has to be reorganized to bring forth a greater expression of human potential (financial success as a trader). And trading has the unique quality of forcing a person to examine their actions and beliefs because the speed of trading forces consequences far faster than the speed of life. In life, a person can maintain destructive beliefs because the feedback loop is so slow (just look at any smoker), while in trading the beliefs embedded in patterned emotional responses is immediate. In my writing, I tend to stay focused on the biology and Emotional Intelligence elements because it is easier for people to see this happening in their trading. The archetypes represent not just a fix but a design element to way a person engages life. Being able to manage yourself emotionally is the first step. Adding Mindfulness and the Internal Dialog is not such a leap then. This is why I start with body memory, move to emotion, and then to thought. Archetypes are inherents elements of our humanness that, because they are embedded in the body, are also directly linked to emotional expression and are part of our potential expression. I do focus on the "big four" (plus the Orphan) initially within a narrow range because I have found that a trader can become successful with this basic awareness. But it is simply the tip of the ice berg. Magician (changing the perceptual map), Creator (intuition), Destroyer (cutting losses quickly, and Jester (letting the past go after a bad or good trade). And a trader's passion (Lover) is the motivation for the Seeker to enter the journey of exploring his humanness (his spirituality). When we fuse our identity with them and they become us, we close the door on our potential. They are all expressions of our potential humanness. And they need to be recognized and organized to bring forth the gifts of our humanness. I figured out a while back that generally TL self selects as group in the direction of do-it-yourself mentality and are biased toward negative interpretation if they have to pay for learning how to learn. That's okay. I learn much from them. People really don't get how much work there is involved in changing the beliefs they hold about the world. And there as some seasoned traders who I both listen to and study here. But you are right, it is not a place clients come from. My motivation is that I have a focused interest in how people organize the self to become successful traders. From that standpoint, TL is a great labortory to observe and participate in. My consulting business is focused on developing relationships with methodology teachers. They can teach methodology to their students until they are blue in the face, but until the mind is developed for managing risk as it exists in probability, the student does not become a successful trader. Be well. Rande Howell

“I don’t understand myself at all. I know what I am supposed to do. But that’s not what I do. Instead, at the moment I need to be disciplined, I get rattled and do exactly what I’m not supposed to do and that’s what I keep doing. I know the trading plan rules are good for me and my trading. And my bad feelings after breaking the rules prove that I need to be following my trading plan. During my review I see and realize what I should have done, but I seem to fall apart during the moments I need to be focused on executing my plan.” Offensive Coordinator vs. Defensive Coordinator Psychologies This trader had done a good job up until the moment he entered the trade. The trade met trading plan criterion for entry. The opportunity was there. The position size was prudent. He was ready to exploit the high probability, low risk trade that the market was presenting. All he had to do was execute his trade plan. But it is in this moment of transition from a psychology looking for opportunity (offensive coordinator) to a psychology of defending his position (defensive coordinator), and his ignorance of this difference, that kept leading him into emotional hijackings. If you follow American football, you will notice that there is a vast difference in the mindset of an offensive coordinator looking to exploit opportunity and a defensive coordinator looking to defend turf. It’s similar in trading. In the trader quoted in the opening paragraph, his lack of understanding and management of his emotional nature when exposed to uncertainty became his undoing. His ignorance, over time, had led him into numerous emotional ambushes while he was trying to manage the trade he was in. His ability to pick winners was high, as evidenced by his win percentage. The problem was that he did not do a good job of defending his trade once in the trade – evidenced by his weak ratio of winners to losers. The fear behind the emotional hijacking is common to traders attempting to manage a trade. It is a fear of missing out on profit. And it swept this trader into an emotional vortex that caused him to exit his trade long before it reached its target. First, he didn’t know that he needed to shift his mindset from offense to defense at this particular moment. It was not in his trade plan. So he entered the trade and all was well until that moment. Then he ran into the flux around the entry point that commonly happens. The trade bounced around. It would come close to his stop, then it would go up and then, back down. But it was not establishing a trend yet. The drama was killing him. A mix of frustration and dread took over his mind as he watched, waiting for the trade to take off. “How long is this going to last?” he asked himself as he tensed up. All he could think about was the money he could lose. He felt muscle tension and was hardly breathing. His eyes were fixated on the screen. Then the trade finally went into positive ground. A flood of relief coursed through his body. After he had been bounced around by this trade, he saw an opportunity to get out of the trade at a small profit. Rattled by what he had gone through, he took the profit before something bad could happen and wipe out the profit he did have. Play by Play Analysis Let’s take a look at how this drama unfolded and see what can be learned from it. First, notice this trader did not have a problem with pulling the trigger. As an evaluator of opportunity to the point of entry, this trader had followed his trading plan. However, what he had not built into his trading plan was a psychological plan. The Offensive Coordinator mindset was natural to him, so a need for emotional and psychological management didn’t occur to him because of this bias. He then, in his mindlessness, generalized this assumption of psychological competence from set-ups to actually managing the flux while riding the trade. But when he was in the trade and the uncertainty of outcome was a real and present concern, he simply tried to push through the moment. He didn’t even acknowledge that the fear of uncertainty had triggered and was building up emotionally, physically, and psychologically in the mindset he was bringing to the trade. His historical way of dealing with this kind of circumstance was to hunker down and resist the feeling. By doing this, he accelerated the emotional build-up. Once the fear had become highly aroused, a trip-switch flipped. The emotional chemistry of fear coursed through his body and his thinking was contaminated. His capacity to think clearly and disciplined was compromised. However, if he had been prepared for this transition between offense and defense, a very different outcome could have played out. And this is an important aspect of trader psychology training in both the DTSM self study course and the Ignite individual course. A Mindful Approach to the Management of Uncertainty Now imagine that a psychological trading coach is watching a film of where this trading play blew up. The major problem he would discover is that there was not an anticipation of the stress while moving from entry to trade management. Looking at the film, this coach would see the emotional arousal in the way the trade was handled (holding of breath, muscle tension, and fixation) that led to the blow up. In the aftermath, the concern for trade management was converted to a fear of loss that led him to get out of a trade early that had actually showed good promise. Both physical and mental preparation could have remedied the way the deal was handled. First the transition from watching for set-ups to dealing with the uncertainty of being in a trade could have been practiced. Breathing and relaxation skills could have been employed to calm the bio-emotive system to prevent it from overwhelming his thinking. Then, intentional self-soothing could be developed, rather than resisting the stress. By anticipating the need for self-soothing and applying this skill as part of a trading plan he would have stayed calm and better able to manage the trade. Finally, intentionally taking on the mindset of a defensive coordinator would have set up a mind rooted in disciplined impartiality. Like other skills, this mindset can be taught to be present to mind during the rigors of managing a trade. This mindset, built into the methodology trading plan, would have been practiced so that it could be called forward as a skill. You may give up some ground – but you’re not going to give up the big one. And you know when to go for the kill – target or stop. Here a psychological trading plan is integrated into the process of the rules that govern your trading. Notice that the defensive coordinator brings a mindset to the performance of trading. It is in cultivating these emotional traits of discipline, courage, impartiality, and self-soothing that the mindset is developed. The energy of the defensive coordinator takes the field after the offensive coordinator provides the opportunity. Together, though very different, they produce a winning formula for a trader’s mind. Rande Howell

Recently I was watching an interview with a creativity researcher, and what he said both rang true and parts of it surprised me. First, he said that creativity doesn't happen often in groups -- brainstorming. Most intuition happens when relaxed and away from the drama. Ideas bubble in. He also said that creativity also happens when the brain is on its speed. Apparenty the intensity really takes the idea to the next level. He gave examples of writers having an idea show up and them intensely work on it. Certainly that happens to me. In my my work, I see the mind as a trading committee and that committee is composed of various elements of the self. Rarely does a trader come equipped off the self to integrate his intuition into his awareness and his trading plan. What I keep finding in working with clients is that the intuition was there, but not well developed. First relaxation is needed, or you can't listen to the "gut". Then I train for a trader to produce a memory of when intuition actually showed up. The key is to manage the feeling element of the emotion. It is the part of the emotion that takes over mind. Discipline, courage, patience, and impartiality have to be first developed as real skills in the trader's mind. Then the mind can be opened to the "gut". Takes work, bkut its the thing that seems to take the trader to the next level in the design of the mindset that you bring to your trading. Rande

I find that many traders have an intuitive element in their trading mind, but they don't know how to integrate the hunches into their decision making. In this left brain world we certainly are not taught. To the intuitive trader, this element of the mind, I call Creator. You learn to open yourself to the hunches and welcome their appearance -- and they are checked out by the clear thinking (hopefully) of your impartiality. I find this works well when developed. It's simply an attunement that is sharpened by a trained mind. Rande Howell

A better route for most traders would be to come to a more effective understanding of what an emotion is and then use that knowledge and skill to manage (not control) the emotion. I don't see much success in traders trying to emotionless, resisting the emotion. The more the trader resists acknowledging the emotion, the more the emotion persists and has power. The whole idea is to move away from a historical mindset of attempting to control outcome and retool the beliefs to a mindset of managing uncertainty where probability is normed. Got to work with fear and impulse patterns to rebuild the mind that trades. A few well meaning affirmations aimed at inducing a mindset is a start. The test is if the affirmations lead to solid beliefs that can withstand the rigors of trading. Usually there is much more work involved than envisioning what you want to happen. You need to become the change. Rande Howell

Trader B hasn't developed a trading system that isolates the problem to his psychology of performance. He really needs to be in trading for methodology. Psychology is pretty much useless until that happens. From the retail traders I work with there is a powerful motivator in their trading -- the desire to provide for their family. That is their cause. They love the game of trading, but their motivation is as provider. If trading is about proving the self by mistaking self worth with networth, they are attuned to a destructive god or what Judeo-Christian tradition calls mammon. Trading can become a path to seek deeper meaning of the self through social causes -- it really depends on the trader's journey. Your last point about psychology articles. I hear you. And I am guilty as charged. The focus on fear gets people's attention. But, as you observe, what happens after that. Articles and books open a cognitive door that we can see through. Changing the beliefs that you bring to the management of uncertainty requires heavy emotional lifting for biological and psychological reasons. That is going to require motivation and urgency on the part of the trader that goes well beyond holding a simplictic belief that change can occur by changing mind rather than our emotional nature. I have backed away from writing about the mechanics of change because I use an archetypal language to help develop inherent talents. It's pretty alien to many people's sensibilities. Maybe what I ought to do is write an article in that domain. It would give a different kind of food for thought. At the bottom through is the fact that it requires work to change heavily embedded beliefs. Rande Howell

Please note that what you frame as what I said is what MM said. My response was Tom Laundry's observation about luck being opporutnity lining up with preparation. Rande Howell

This isn't about rationalization. It is about the mindset you bring to the trade -- the eyes you see through and assess opportunity through. All cognition is emotional state dependent. The emotional brain makes a decision and your thinking brain produces a rationalization. Fear produces a state of mind that believes in the certainty of bad things happening. Euphoria (much like cocaine operates in the brain) produces a state of mind that believes in the certainty that good things are going to continue. A calm centered mind in disciplined impartiality is going to believe in the certainty that what ever the market is willing to give that you can take advantage of. Each mindset "sees" the market information differently. In fear, you don't trade what you see, you trade what you believe will happen based on hypervigilance. In euphoric, you don't trade what you see -- you trade with gullible anticipation. As MM pointed out many traders confuse skill with luck when a streak occurs. When a trader reviews his trades (both winners and losers), he is evaluating them hopefully for consistency to his trade plan. In over trading, a trader is generally stretching his plan beyond its limits and entering trades that no longer fall within his parameters. Even if you win, this does not bode well for consistent winning over time. Of course, in fear, he never enters the trade in the first place or flips out while managing the trade. The key here is emotional state management as it applies to the mindset that shows up to trade. Rande Howell

I agree. Tom Laundry, old coach of the Dallas Cowboys, once said that luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Bring a centered mindset to that mix and you can take advantage of the situation. Rande Howell

I just don't see many traders who stay euphoric for long. The emotion itself leads to compromised perception. I know successful traders who get euphoric after their trading day is over and they are willing to take off their game face and have a little fun. Next day, it's all business again. Rande Howell

It appears we are in alignment. Most people come to life and to trading with inadequate skills for knowing how to change -- particularly long held beliefs that operate outside of the awareness. Good coaching is essential. In sports teams or individuals hire psychologists to integrate the technical and the mental side to act in concert with one another. It is the mind that is being designed for the act of performance. In trading it is the same. Though the skills are different to produce the performance. I work with several methodology teachers where they teach the methodology and they refer to me for performance issues. One, Gail Mercer of Traders Help Desk, is taking it a step further where the training is to be side by side. So, we'll see in about a year. It will be interesting in seeing how they work together. Rande Howell

For sure as you see your TA grow, you have evidence to demonstrate confidence. Most folks have to learn how to reorganize their beliefs about their ability to manage uncertainty for that to happen. What I find is that has to happen first for the trading account to grow. The growth is a consequence of a changed mindset. Rande Howell

Euphoria is just as dangerous as fear to the trader's performance. As a feeling, Euphoria generates a certainty in the belief that the good times are going to roll on forever. Leads to alot of over-trading. What we are looking for is not just the performance (over trading), it is also the mindset that set ups the performance Rande Howell

The "Fear of Missing Out" drives many of the fear and impulse-based problems that traders experience in the performance of trading. But what does it look like? In what areas of trading performance does it manifest? Have you ever seen a set up that looked too good to pass up and you grabbed it impulsively before it could get away, even though it was not in your trading plan? Have you even been seized by hesitation, looking for more and more confirmation before entry and felt the pressure of opportunity building up to act until you jumped in the trade just to get out of the discomfort? Or, have you ever been in a trade, got unnerved by the initial flux, and gotten out of the trade with only a small profit before anything else could go wrong, and the trade went on to your target? Fear of Missing Out as Greed These are the primary faces of the "Fear of Missing Out". Notice that this particular fear can show up in the form of fear or greed or a combination of both. In the first scenario greed drives the "fear of missing out". The trader sees opportunity arise outside of the parameters allowed by his trade plan. The greed to seize opportunity (or the desire to acquire) hijacks the trader’s discipline and impartiality. This is seen in over-trading, impulse trading, and revenge trading. When discipline slips, the “desire to acquire” motivation trumps clear-headed thinking. Greed, as a driver of motivation, has its origins back in our evolutionary history. It is neither good nor bad. It is simply an emotion that evolved over the eons to help us survive, and then it became instinctual. In the times before agriculture, no one knew from where or when his next meal was coming. So when the opportunity arose, survival dictated that you take advantage of a situation – whether you were hungry or not. Taking more than you needed, even at the expense of others, helped ensure survival in leaner times. So it became wired into our biological repertoire. This survival strategy was embedded long before man had developed a psychology as we understand it today. Greed evolved into a survival strategy as an opportunistic way of taking advantage of circumstance. In a breakdown in the learned discipline required of trading, greed (in the form of the "fear of missing out") can trigger and take the trader out of the impartiality so necessary for consistently successful trading. Without emotional state management skills, a trader will continue to have his trading mind hijacked by primitive impulses rooted in survival. Fear of Missing Out, a Mixture of Fear and Impulse In addition, a mix of fear and impulse produce tension and psychological discomfort to a point where a trader jumps out of his hesitation and into a trade late. The pressure to act builds as he watches the trade in order to get more and more confirmation, and he is held by his hesitation from entering the trade. Finally the emotional pressure compels him to act impulsively just to get out of the discomfort fostered by the opposing drives of desire of avoiding uncertainty and the desire to acquire. By the time he enters the trade, the real opportunity for this trade has passed and the trader is stuck with having bought high. This timing problem is as much a psychological management problem as a skill of timing of the trade itself. The fear of uncertainty or loss has kept the trader out of the trade even though it meets his criteria for a trade entry point. He keeps looking for more confirmation as tension to take advantage of opportunity builds. The need to take advantage of a set up is not being driven by disciplined impartiality; but, rather, the need is being driven by a going concern that he will miss out on the opportunity. The mix of the fear of uncertainty and the fear of missing out has collapsed the capacity of the trader to trade from disciplined impartiality. These are the trades that cause the trader to wonder when reviewing his trades “What on earth was I thinking?” The point is that he was not thinking. He was reacting and his thinking mind was clouded with opposing biologically-based motivations. In the resulting confusion, poor trading decisions arise from the lapse in internal discipline. The Fear of Missing Out as Fear of Losing Profit In the third example, the fear of missing out shows up purely as a fear of losing profit. This also represents one of the most common risk and trade management situations in trading. A trader enters a trade and experiences a period of flux as his trade bounces around. It’s below his entry point and then it spikes above his entry point. Then it takes a quick dive back into negative territory. An undisciplined trader is unnerved by this behavior and is triggered to fear. Now the trader is managing the trade from a position of "fear of loss". And when he sees the opportunity to take a small profit and exit the trade (remember he is thinking and acting from fear now), he pounces on the opportunity. Relieved of the psychological discomfort, he now watches the trade go to the target. But the fear of missing out (on a small profit) has done its damage. Notice in this form of the Fear of Missing Out that there are two “acts”. It is the emotional and psychological management of the trade entry and the resulting flux that unnerves the trader - and he never recovers from this initial moment where his psychology is coming face to face with his beliefs about his ability to manage uncertainty. Once he is past the initial flux and the trade begins to trend, his trading mind is already hijacked by his fear of losing and he grabs at the first chance of taking profit. In the intensity of the moment, this seems like a victory. Later, when his brain and mind has calmed down and he is reviewing the trade, the trader realizes that fear immobilized discipline, impartiality, and a planned trade. Beliefs and Emotional Regulation Hold the Key A trader’s beliefs about his capacity to manage uncertainty to his advantage is at the core of the "fear of missing out". If he holds a core belief that he is powerless in the face of uncertainty or inadequate to manage uncertainty, his trading account will bear this out. If this is the belief, the trader is driven to produce the feeling of certainty (which is impossible in the market) rather than to build a mindset designed to manage the probabilities in uncertainty. Trading becomes a mirror into the organization of the self that the trader brings to the management of uncertainty. It will show you whether you are creating your life out of the avoidance of fear or the management of uncertainty. Trading and performance in trading, with Mindfulness developed as a skill, becomes a mirror that reflects the beliefs that actually color the trader’s perception of the trade. As the trader journeys into trading, he learns that he has to face his fears and the self-limiting beliefs operating in the background of his awareness. The "fear of missing out" is exposed in the act of trading, but it will have been in operation in other domains of the trader’s life. Eventually, the trader embraces the assumption that all life is uncertain and that certainty is not possible long term. The threat is not external – there is no Holy Grail “out there”. You are the Holy Grail. It is the mindset (your beliefs about your capacity to manage uncertainties) that you bring to the uncertainty of trading (and life) that create the difference. With the "fear of missing out calmed" and a disciplined and impartial mindset established, you realize that it is not about winning or losing a single trade. It is about the mindset that you bring to the performance of the trade. Winning and losing disappear in the moment. Freed from fear, you trade what you see and not the crazy conversations going on in your mind. And your "fear of missing out" leads you to the very place in your psychology that you needed to re-organize. Rande Howell www.tradersstateofmind.com

zdo I have merged emotional intelligence theory with archetypal theory, for sure. It's an intentional bias. This is based on the asssumption that WE ARE EMOTION and cognition comes out of emotion. I would say that the symbolic representation of getting at the energy of an archetype is rooted to an emotional base -- and this is the reason I link emotion to archetype. For the curious, symbolic representation is the phenomenon where the brain converts electrical behavior in neural networks to symbols and objects for pattern recognition and thought. Out of this comes a mind that has produced a symbolic representation of the world it is interpreting. Humans experience thought (the product of symbolic representation) either in visual, auditory, or feeling terms. Early on, I experienced a number of traders who could not effective produce visual or auditory representation of thought or archetype. What I found, though, was that everyone could (because they have biology) experience the energy of an archetype by the feeling aspect of perception. Out of this, I began building the sense of an archetypal presence from the feeling component of an emotion -- since it is the element of an emotion that compels us to believe in the certainty of a particular symbolic representation. This approach has resulted in much better development and use of the archetypes by traders. What I have also done intentionally is to narrowly focus the archetypal energy for its usefulness in trading. Sage, for instance, I define as impartiality. It can also be defined as wisdom in the literature. It's very nuanced. But in trading, without impartiality in decision making, effective trading is really difficult. Discipline, as the feeling associated with Ruler, is the same. There are other qualities of the Ruler archetype that exist, but in trading, discipline is basic to trading performance. The list goes on. Intuition as Creator.... I hold that there are at least two forms of intuition. One is pattern recognition on an unconscious level. Years of chart reading gives a trader a "sense" of what the market is going to do. This elements needs to be incorporated into a trading mind. However, I work with people who have flashes of intuition that are not connected to pattern recognition. They seem to come out of the blue. This may be creator or magician. It is formless and simply appears out of nowhere. And it also needs to be worked into a traders mind. However, I hold that the trading committee (the mind) needs to be well structured before elements like this are added to the mix. In this sense, my work is for traders who have not developed their mind for trading yet. I find few who have. But, over time, a trader who has become successful has either developed these qualities from overt talents or they have struggled through and found them. From what I gather, there is a strong intuitive element in your trading. Usually it takes a good long time for a person to develop this element so that it is an effective element in the trading mind that trades. Good for you. Thanks for your comments. Rande Howell

zdo Wow! This is interesting, and I am not sure if my responses will be consistent with your observations and question. The "big four" are what I teach for the basic state of mind. They are discipline (Ruler), impartiality (Sage), courage (Warrior), and patience (Caregiver). Notice the link between emotional state and archetype - this is operationally how an inherent element of the self will show up in your awareness. Usually they are not present in a trader who has not become consistently successful. They really have to be brought forth into active awareness. I also teach Creator (intuition) and Destroyer (cutting losses early) as a client demonstrates that can work with the basic four in their trading (follow their trading plan). Archetypes will express themselves in developmentally appropriate manners. For instance, the Orphan (the fear that traders often act from) also has an empowered side. It becomes the resilience and vigilance needed to maintain a developed state of mind under the rigors of trading. For your question: I have no idea of how to approach it. Help me understand that last part. Rande Howell

Markets are neither moral or immoral. They are neither fair, nor unfair. They simply are. Each brings their narrative to the dance called trading the markets. And out of that narrative, the insiders and outsiders create a story to explain the phenomenon of the market. When a trader lets go of the story of how it should be, they become open to a new narrative that can explain in a different way. I'm at the Traders Expo in NYC right now and its amazing at the stories that people are captive to that create pain and suffering. Naivity is a dangerous thing to the game if you are planning to keep your money or make money. Wise to the ways of the world is essential no matter what your attitude.

onesmith I will. In the meantime I encourage to go to my website and hit the tab on Articles. I have a number of past articles and MoneyShow videos that focus on brain, emotion, mind, and trading. The major point is to begin to appreciate that what we call thinking is actually our neo-cortex producing an explanation for what our emotional brain has already decided based on assumptions that have become embedded into neuro-circuitry as beliefs. The official name for this is cognitive dissonance. Many different belief systems interact with the market. None are right in an absolute senes. You will see varioius perspectives on the market producing the probalility of winning trades, And vice versa. When the trader wins consistently, he often begins to believe in the certainty of his beliefs. And therein lies a danger in believing in the biological throwness to seek certainty. Many real good traders start becoming attuned to the market (which is a biological and physical phenomenon). And out of this attunement, their methodology is shaped beyond a systems approach. When SUIYA was talking about why he made some trades, he reported his response was "I dunno". My suspicion is that this is his awareness becomes attuned and his intuition speaks greatly giving his conscious decision making a real leg up. Rande Howell

jaysmith124 Breathing has been used as a way of managing emotion and calming mind for thousands of years. So you could have read about it in many people. My use of bellows breathing comes out of Hindu practices by way of Herbert Benson,MD. The Mindfulness you speak of becomes possible with a calm mind. We come to a point where we do not have to fuse with a thought or belief and let it carry us away. And we become more like the dog's mind (I'd rather call it Zen mind) where it can move from one state of mind to another based on the directive of the dog's master. We are the animal that can become master of our ways. It is truly a gift. Moving to the development of the archetypes within us becomes a natural extention in this process. Rande Howell

SpearPointTrader I'm with SUIYA on this one regarding "detachment from reality". In the practice of mindfulness, there is a stepping back and observing from a dispassionate perspective. That may represent a very different way of seeing the world -- kinda like your detachment. For most traders this sense of impartiality has to be learned, so it is a deviation from the historical way they have interacted with the world. If you read this forum, really read what SUIYA, MM, and GOSU say about this. Take their comments in the context of trading, rather than other domains of action. It is their (learned or inherent, I don't know) detachment or dispassion that allows them to "see" the market in such a way that they are able to extract from the markets. At least, this is my take on it. I don't know for a fact that they are successful traders -- but I believe so based on their presentation. In my work I am striving to teach traders how to turn or and turn off this quality. Turn on this perspective when trading because it is necessary to attune to the emotionality of the markets and take advantage of the emotion traders are bringing to the dance. In dispassion, detachment, or impartiality is becomes much more possible to "see" or sense others fear and/or greed based on market conditions. This is not a state of mind that will bring success in other relationships in other domains though. It's a necessary element in trading mind though. Rande Howell