Hi Bundle. I was thinking about our reluctance to push the submit button and couldn't help to remember Richard Bandler's assertion that "It's the right and duty of your unconscious mind to keep from your conscious mind anything that is unpleasant". I read it in that big article about his murder case. So given that presupposition and also knowing that we feel,see and hear on a conscious level, could there be something in our unconscious that prevents us from pushing that button, something that we are not aware of? Could this something be the fact that since our childhoods( I don't know about everybody's but mine for sure) we've been let known that time machines don't exist, that future prediction is a futile attempt? Or even what u described as a "need to know", we have to see the path in order to walk it. If my presupposition is true then it would be next to impossible to identify what that something is and it would explain why there is only 5% of us who make it in this business. I tried to take notice of my feelings and I do notice them, but that doesn't help me get rid of them. I have to get rid of what causes them. What do u think about all this? Thanx.
LOL coffee,I still don't know what to make of you. Are you my alter ego, just delayed slighty. You ask questions that frightenly parallal my own path. Are you bating me on something? Are you someone I know? And why do you ask these questions in the forum instead of PMing me. Oh well, I may just be paranoid and you may just be what you appear. Anyway, on to my response.... Let's cut right to the chase. You state, "I tried to take notice of my feelings and I do notice them, but that doesn't help me get rid of them." This is not true. You can't force anything to happen. Here's why: by trying to get rid of something you don't want you need to focus on that something. So, for a simple example, lets say you perceive you lack confidence. During the process of trying to get rid of your lack of confidence (I realize that sounds kind of convoluted, but it's how our brains work) you must focus on the lack. It's impossible not to. Sort of like saying, don't think of the color blue. You can't not do it. So that means, essentially, that trying to force a change consciously probably is ineffective. At a minimum it's very inelegant. So what's left? Pure awareness. The problem is awareness involves a great deal of kinesthetic feedback and our culture has all but punished those of us in tune with our bodies. The way around this is to create little excersises to produce noticing things, but without any judgement attached. It's the judgement, (otherwise known as the voice(s) in your head or "thinking" or analyziyng) that keeps you stuck. Here's the most powerful excersie I know of: Grounded versus ungrounded assessment. A grounded assessment is any thought or statement that 12 jurors could agree on. Something like, my shirt is striped, or I'm not wearing socks today. Ungrounded is anything else. Now, all day long notice which type of statements you're making. One isn't right or wrong, just notice. Start doing this when you're trading. If you're making ungrounded assessments you most likely will be losing. If you are making grounded assessments you most likely will be profitable. Have fun.
That sounds strangely like a concept I've noticed for years: there is fact and there is opinion. Opinion may be based on fact, which either the fact itself or fact-based opinion would make it "grounded assessment", or if not based on fact (such as being based on feelings or traditions), such opinion would be "ungrounded assessment". Personally, I don't care for opinions based on anything much else but fact. Of course, in a pluralistic society, with everyone having a right to their opinion whether based on fact or not, makes it terribly ridiculous sometimes to move forward because we have to deal with people who are acting on opinions based on nothing factually substantial. Then there's the politically correct mindset about these expressions, whose influence is most keenly noticed when people buffer what they write with, "this is just my opinion", as if anything other than fact isn't.
Bundle, I PMed u once and nothing happened. And as far as knowing me,u have to remember the rule #2 in the "Flip-A-Coin trading" thread that "we are a connected whole" and when u really think about the development of human beings u can notice that we haven't progressed since the beginning,that we are still the same person since 3000 years ago. We treat money the same way Romans did, we are afraid of the unknown, anytime there is a feeling we act the same way since long ago. So I am not surprised I am going the same path u did. And no, u don't know me. I wish though I would've known u long time ago. After reading your post I realized that I was forcing myself to focus on the wrong side of the equation. But it creates more questions than answers. In your example of the lack of confidence if I focus on the lack and ask myself questions like "where does it come from?" or "how do I know when to have it?" I have a hard time coming up with an answer. I guess I have to explain the background of my situation to make it more personal. At any particular moment of our lives we have a certain value for money. It is a pattern that we are not aware of,sitting in our unconscious. One way to describe that value would be what we can buy with certain amount of money. The "what" and "certain amount" are two parameters that,I think,determine how we measure the value of money. There lies a certain threshold that tells us how to feel about certain amount of money, wether it is a big amount or small. And that threshold is where our stops usually are. So we are not consciously aware of that threshold and to make it worse it constantly changes. And even worse yet it is dependant on our culture,society,etc. So why do I bring it all up? I have encountered an obstacle. I can not increase size. Again if my presupposition is right then right now I can see two way to fix it. I can focus on changing my threshold or changing the meaning of value of money, that is to detach the meaning from the value. And the most important thing about it, I think, is I can not kid myself, which would probably be the hardest. Bundle, I am new to this mental part of trading and never really thought of it until I read your posts. I might not also be assessing the situation right. How would u deal with this one? That exercise of 12 jurors should be the first presupposition of any trading plan. Very powerful.
coffee, Touche', yes, we are inevitably connected! Regarding your questions regarding confidence: I have slightly changed my outlook on those types of questions. To answer them in a direct way you need to either examine the chronology of events leading up to the emotion in question. Or, if it's a question like, "how do you do that?", the answer relates to what NLP call strategies. Too much for me to explain here, but basically what goes on is you determine the sequence of mental representations in terms of sights, sounds, and feelings. But you leave out the content. It's more or less the structure of subjectivety. And by definition, all emotions and thinking are subjective. Only pure awareness or observation is close to objective. This may sound complex, but only because it's new to you. There is a simple description of the process of strategy ellicatation in Tony Robbins first book. Personally, I have found an easier, more elegant way to deal with unuseful emotions, behaviours, thoughts, etc. Step 1: notice what happened, just notice. There is no step 2. Most reading this post will be resistant to the idea that just noticing and doing NOTHING else could possibly accomplish much. In my experience, it can accomplish everything. Try it for a while and "notice" what happens. As to the size issue you bring up, I know of two solutions. The first is to create a black box to trade your system and let a computer do the trades (if that's viable). The second, which takes a lot more effort but will have far reaching effects on your life, is to become intimate with the functioning of your mind and the options for managing your state. The state you're in dictates what the possible behaviours you can produce are. Currently, when you trade small size you are in one particular state, when you trade larger size you are mentally (and physiologically) residing in another state. This is analogous to traders who can do well paper trading but lose big when they trade real money. The same Tony Robbins book (Unlimited Power) is a great primer on state management. Additional resources include any material by Richard Bandler. There is a lot of other NLP type material out there, but frankly, much of it is a poor repetition of Bandler or just plain bad stuff. You also hit on an important topic: changing meaning. Consider this possiblity: NOTHING has an absolute meaning. There is only the meaning you place on it. I understood this in an intellectual way for a long time. Only recently have I begun to benefit the results of actively choosing what things mean. For instance, like what a losing trade means. Or not having money to pay the bills. Or losing a loved one. Don't limit these skills to trading. Why not have one set of efforts improve every aspect of your life. Talk about leverage! PM anytime, sorry I missed your last one. And thanks for the opportunity to make me think, it's a great experience. Best, Bob
Zen training, easy to say but hard to pratice the mind is like a monkey, never be still, just an observation
nkhoi, What you have observed is precisely what I am referring to. Don't underestimate the value of just being aware of that noise. In order to quiet it, you can't try to quiet it. Instead, you begin to notice that it's there. And then notice you choose it not to be. And then, perhaps, notice you're once again fighting the noise. And then, later, noticing you've stopped fighting it. And then noticing that you stopped noticing it. And on it goes. This sequence IS the sequence to peace and awareness. This is not silly rubbish. Do you remember in the Market Wizards, the interview with the fellow that didn't even want his name revealed? All because he realized that if he shared his understanding of mind, he would be ridiculed or worse. It's a shame, but it's true. Most will persist in calling the world flat because that's the way their senses communicate "reality" to them. I hope I'm remembering this correctly, but I think somewhere Marketsurfer mentioned the tag line of "trade what you see, not what you think" and then he suggested it should probably be the other way around. I agree with that, expcept perhaps to modify it a bit. How about trade what is, not what you think it is.
Hi Bundlemaker, For years I suffered from severe back pain caused by muscle spasms. I tried strengthening excercises, muscle relaxants, massage, physio - you name it. Some of these "solutions" brought me short-term relief, which was much welcomed. But nothing worked to prevent another spasm from occurring at some point down the road. Then my sister turned me on to John Sarno, a New York doctor who runs a clinic for people with chronic back pain. He's also authored at least two books on the subject. On her suggestion, I bought his book, Healing Back Pain, and began reading. I couldn't believe it. Within the first few pages, he had described me and my long struggle with backpain, and he had also laid out a simple solution that could make the problem go away. These are the important points: Through reading his book I realized I was the kind of person who, rather than confronting stressful situations and venting in their aftermath, would turn the other cheek, suck it up, put the issue on ignore, however you care to describe it. Sarno's theory is that, frequently, when a person has this personality tendency, the unconscious mind will help the conscious mind avoid thinking stressful thoughts by causing distracting physical ailments. As long as the conscious mind is preoccupied with concerns about physical pain and a search for relief, it has no time to focus on mental stresses and thus it avoids the psychological pain associated with feelings of anger or hurt. In my case, my unconscious mind appeared to be causing me back pain. Of course, I will never know for certain that this was so. But I can tell you that once I became aware of this possibility and followed his instructions to address the problem, my chronic backpain dissolved away. (I still get occasional flareups, but it's not even close to the problem it used to be.) What is his solution? Simply notice that I was harbouring stressful thoughts. Simply notice this and, at the same time, acknowledge that my own mind was causing me distracting pain so that I would not have time to consciously examine these stress-inducing thoughts. Metaphorically, what I did was I shone a flashlight into the darkness of my unconscious, and I told myself that I had caught it in the act of generating the pain. Sarno's theory is that, in causing physical diversions of this type, the unconscious mind is trying to be helpful, but that once this activity is noticed (and the stress is acknolwedged), it loses its effectiveness, so the unconscious stops doing it. (Actually, it's not quite that cut and dried. He suggests the unconscious will often sneak back into action with other diversions, but the solution is the same and eventually the mind can be retrained.) Reading your post just now, I was struck by the fact that your method of overcoming "unuseful emotions, behaviours, thoughts, etc." is essentially the same as Sarno's. I've been trading - and dealing with the psychological side of trading - for about a year now, and I've often wondered if his theories could help people address problem behaviours such as the compulsion to trade, fear of increasing bet size, obsessive following of open trades and the like. I still don't know if they could, but your post leads me to believe that, at the very least, there is overlap between the world of backpain and the world of trading pain. Regards, chaos
There is another solution. One that a guyswho occassionallyrites on this board managed and office i traded in. He use to say "ou have to step up and pet the pony." Sure you can spend a lot of time working on the most elegant zen like desensitization or you could commit to trading and trade your ass off. See when you commit to trading your ass off, it requires a plan and trading small. Soon your fear is non existent.