T2W Trading Community

Of course, there is the possibility that you inherited a primarily positive script, full of beneficial intention. However, even this does not necessarily mean that these qualities you have developed will cut much mustard in the market. It is a fact that attributes that shine elsewhere in our lives may prove detrimental in a market sense. Even if you are pretty sussed out and together you’re probably going to have a degree of unlearning to do before you can get it as a trader. And, if like most of us, you bring the odd bit of emotional baggage to your work then it truly can be a formidable task to get yourself out of the way enough to see what needs to be done and then do it.

For sure, it may be relatively straightforward for you to sell yourself the idea of change on an intellectual level but the emotional and visceral responses it will generate are far more challenging to deal with. Changing past patterns involves going through the very real fear of letting go. You don’t know what will happen. As a trader you need to ask yourself, at a deep level, if it’s a trade you want to take.

Commitment to change
Assuming it is, the next, crucial step is to commit to change these patterns and bring your will, conscious intent and energy to this task. How quickly and convincingly you are able to do this is a reflection of both the depth to which your patterns are ingrained and the levels of frustration you have had to bear aswell as the extent of your desire and passion for success. Commitment is a moment to moment journey, not some whimsical ideal that evaporates at the first sign of difficulty and as such you need to be clear what it is you are about to undertake. The existing, entrenched patterns are unlikely to give up their apparently presumed and rightful place in your unconscious without a murmur of dissent and so finding ways of gradually reducing their impact becomes important.

One way of facilitating this is by understanding that the inherent purpose of these patterns is not in question and is being neither compromised nor changed. The innate quality of reliable, dependable resourcefulness is being retained. All that changes is the message/injunction that you request your unconscious to communicate. It is likely that the original task entrusted to the unconscious, amongst other things, was to ensure survival, safety and behaviour appropriate to the needs identified at that [earlier] time. If you can find the belief in yourself that your unconscious can become your trading friend then it makes the task of committing to change much easier and provides a ready made motivation to get you going.

Visualisation
One way of further facilitating these changes is to formulate a vision of yourself as a successful trader. Imagination, as Einstein remarked, is more important than knowledge and when combined with and directed by the purposeful intent of your conscious mind it becomes a potent force working for your benefit. Flesh out your vision, the more rounded and 3D the better. See yourself in front of your screens executing profitably and become aware of as many aspects of yourself and your surroundings in this vision as you can. What is your posture like? And your breathing?

What are the physical sensations that you are aware of as you trade successfully?  What thoughts pass through your mind?   What are  you feeling as you take consistent profits from the market?  What is the ambience of your trading room  ?  What music, if any, are you  listening to?

You might also want to experiment with images within the vision that speak to you. For example, you could picture two pots on your desk, one almost full, containing slips of paper on which are written your winning trades and the other almost empty containing your losing trades. You can have fun designing something that works for you and as long as you believe what you are visualizing is possible then the only limit is your own imagination. The key thing is to find images that connect you to the process of success and make these as clear as you can. Try varying the intensity of colour you see in your visualization and play around with the fine tuning until you have something which feels right and fitting and is tangible, real and achievable.The more you can get an experiential sense of what your vision of yourself as a successful trader looks and feels like the better. The unconscious mind receives this experience as if it is already in the present and so the greater your intensity of focus and purpose and the more you commit to it the deeper root it can take.

Visualisation is most effectively undertaken when you can get your mind to a place of quiet and stillness. Ideally you want to be able to bring your brainwave activity to the alpha level of 8-12 waves per second. This is associated with introspection and relaxation, superlearning and the production of calming neurochemicals. Change needs to happen at the deeper levels of the mind in order to take root and become lasting.  What you are attempting to do is to plant a root in fertile soil and so, if you like, you need to get as many weeds out of the way before you start.  You become what you think about and focus on with intensity and purpose so once you are clear what you want and you know what you need to do to get there then you can trust your unconscious to find ways of delivering the results you request from it.

Transition through conflict
In the process of allowing these changes to gradually unfold there is inevitably conflict.  You are asking your unconscious to accept something different than is already there and the transition between the inherited and established old and the consciously self determined new creates a tension and varying levels of resistance. It is important to understand that this is the key that underscores the process of change and how you deal with this is what determines your eventual results.  As you build and strengthen your self discipline this adds to the developing momentum. The trend is your friend. And this is one you want to ride forever.

Having created and developed your vision it becomes important to find a way of grounding this with actions that will support it and further the process of change. Such actions  have many functions. Firstly, they serve to reinforce what you have committed to and visualized. You trade in accordance with your  new vision of yourself as a success and practice the methods and actions you deem appropriate to this, moment to moment through the trading day. Trading from this new perspective encourages you to align the conscious mind and will with the seeds of change already planted in your unconscious mind. Secondly, it becomes increasingly difficult for you to trade in the old [losing] ways you had previously followed and do so with the awareness of the new methods you have designed. Thirdly, having specific criteria to follow and trade by lessens the potential for emotional disruption and sabotage.

Also you need to be clear in yourself that you believe you are worthy of the success you seek and that you are capable of achieving it. The more you choose to take actions that are different from what you have traditionally done the more you help yourself to reinforce the power of your new vision of yourself. You can also help yourself by determining a clear set of strategies that will focus and strengthen your resolve you to run your winners, get into and out of trades or whatever particular problem you are struggling with. Once you have identified the trading behaviours that are not serving you in these respects then you can break these down so as to understand their constituent parts and watch for them to arise and then go against them and trade completely from the perspective of your vision.  Of course, all the above assumes that you are cognisant with strategies that reflect the hard and fast rules that will lead to success. There will obviously be a personal slant to what you request your unconscious to develop and deliver but the “programme” needs to be built around  the time  tested market truths, which though evident to all, lose nothing in repetition. Any vision of yourself must therefore be tailored around the following :-

• Judicious trade selection
• Clear criteria for entries and exits
• Capital preservation 
• Acceptable risk parameters
• Running winners patiently
• Cutting losses quickly  

Additionally you must find a style of trading that suits your personality. It is no use trying to be something that you are not and fighting your own tape. You have to fit to find success. If you are by nature aggressive and risk hungry and you like fast action then it is more likely you will find your thing as a daytrader rather than as a swing trader. As you feel comfortable with and established in your new vision of yourself and it begins to yield the desired results in terms of consistent profits then you can perhaps broaden your approach and take these new found skills into different trading avenues but initially choose one approach and stick to it.

In the end, you just have to keep on keeping on, do the right things over and over again and persist until you reach the stage referred to as unconscious competence. The successful trader is the one who is able to bear the uncertainties involved in such a transition and walk the line with confidence and unshakeable self belief.

In a sense it’s about finding and following “the way”. You may have  impulses, historic dispositions and a strong desire to do things your way in anticipation of a particular reward [money] but the only way to play the ultimate numbers game is by making your way and the market’s one and, as we all know, the market is always right.