Sorry, message was too short. I think you should try everything, because what works for me might not work for other and vice versa. I have very good control over my mental state and beliefs, so I found that just learning the facts for me is what was needed, this allowed me to eliminate my emotions. Hypnosis might work for someone else. I do know that in college we use to hypnotize each other for fun, so I do believe that you can control some subconscious items. For me, dealing with larger issues, such as emotions with trading, had too many factors involved for simple subconscious factors to overpower my irrational and illogical thinking and thought pattern at times. Always try something if you have the desire on the heartâ¦â¦..
I hope that cleared it up..... I do not want you to think that I believe a shallow or narrow mindset is the approach one should take........
peter, you've found what works for you and that's great. Thanks for the post. Compared to some of the threads lately that deteriorates into shouting matches, I think this one is offering some real ideas. And, hearing what other people have used that worked and didn't work is very useful. I know of a couple of NLP practitioners (Connie Rae and Steve Andreas) who only look for ideas that don't work and try to figure out why. They claim they learn more from that than studying what does. I applied this idea to technical analysis. I spend a lot more time studying why a particular double bottom, for instance, didn't hold; versus why a different one did hold. I learn a lot more from pattern failures you could say.
bundlemaker, This all sounds very interesting but I have to say I went to the Bandler website and a lot of what I saw there struck me as typical new age doubletalk. Could you give some examples of how this has helped your trading? Or perhaps you could address how someone would use these strategies or techniques to deal with inappropriate behavior, eg letting losses get away from them.
AAA, I've been trying to do just that with my previous posts. I can only site examples and give a bit of a taste of these ideas. Frankly, trying to teach this via elitetrader would be challenging at a minimum. Add to that your ability to judge quickly (ie. "seems like new age double-talk") without full knowledge, understanding or experience of what you talk, merely by glancing at a web site; would make it damn near impossible. As I have said many times on elitetrader, the basis or root of all behavior and action is your belief system. If a person chooses (consciously or otherwise) to believe something "works" and and another person believes it "doesn't work", who is right? Why, of course, they both are. I think you get my point. As an aside, I would also ask you this: what's wrong with new-age double talk, if it gets you what you want. I know virtually nothing of the new age movement, other than my perception that new age philosophy assumes a higher order of organizational intelligence pervading the universe. If that's what you mean by new age double talk, then I guess you're right. In my experience (including anything I've read that's backed up by facts) I have NEVER come accross someone truly successful (admittedly, by my definition) that doesn't concede something about their success comes from an unexplainable source. I've witnessed terminally ill people have instant recovery (the doctors just scratch their heads or say they must have misdiagnosed), I've watched people who get chemo never lose a strand of hair, I've seen traders consistantly pick market multi-month market bottoms to the minute, etc. etc. Not one of these people denies something comes from outside them. Current physics supports the notion of everything being connected to everything else. Now, that's downright spiritual in nature. But, that's what quantum physics tells us. Look at curlian (unsure of spelling) photography. Part of you isn't in you. No one can explain this. I don't need to know an explanation, I only need to know what works. If you're truly interested in testing these ideas, grab a book or a tape set. Study it, apply it. Really commit to learning something. Make an investment in time and energy. That's what I did. It has paid great dividends. Enough said, I really don't want to debate. I'm here to share experiences and give direction to those interested. I have nothing to prove.
bundlemaker, I'm not attacking you or the site. If I hadn't been interested and curious I wouldn't have spent a hour or so going through all the material there. Unlike a lot of social interaction, trading is not subjective. There is a right and wrong, a good outcome and a bad outcome and it's spelled out in your P and L run every day. Much of the material I read seemed oriented in another direction. "No outcome is bad" or stuff like that. I can understand how one can construct a philosophy along those lines and have it enhance your life, but I'm not sure how it helps you trade. That's all I was trying to say and why I was looking for some examples.
AAA, let me try and give you an example based on the idea about no such thing as a bad outcome. More specifically, what is meant is that in absolute terms, nothing is good or bad; rather merely a result that may or may not bring you closer to that which you desire. I don't mean good or bad in terms of morals, only in a way related to how you respond emotionally to the outcomes you create, for instance a winning or losing trade. Most traders tend to react positively to profits and negatively to losses. Now at first glance that may be understandable, and some would argue that's the way it should be: the idea being to motivate yourself with the positive reinforcement of profit, and negative reinforcement of loss. This is related to the notion that in order to be successful at any given endeavor you can't feel good about it until you achieve success. NLP suggests just the opposite, that in order to be successful, you first must feel good (meaning perhaps, among other things: confident, deserving, etc.). So, instead of feeling bad about a loss (which tends to debilitate you and cause emotional spirals like lack of discipline) NLP techniques are designed to make you realize that a loss is not bad, it just is. If you can completely disconnect from the notion of a loss as being bad you can be freed from the emotional constraints of negativity. Don't you trade differently when you're in different emotional states? NLP lets you choose and fine tune the state you're in to maximize useful behavior, regardless of your current level of success. Believe me, for most of my adult life (I'm 40) I thought the way to success was to beat the shit out of myself everytime I made a mistake. It was a VERY hard thing to just decide to be alright with whatever happened. Now, that doesn't mean ignoring results, or as Tony Robbins jokes, the gardener with a bunch of weeds repeatedly saying "there are no weed" and the weeds of course are still there. The basic formula for success is: decide what you want, take action, change action until you get it. What I discovered is that you can disconnect the success formula from the idea that you have to feel bad about "failing" (ie, a losing trade) until you're successful. I realize both ways can work, it's just that I've found (and so many others) that the "NLP way" is easier, more enjoyable, has other side benefits, and is faster. Now, many people that are successful think this way anyway. I sometimes hear, "well yeah, of course, that's what I've always done". The thing is, what we do and the way we do it, we assume everyone does it the same way. But that's not how it is. We're all different. NLP seeks to make these choices available to all. The hardest thing for me to explain here are the mechanics of NLP, the tools of change if you will. I'll give it a shot, but in a sentence or two it may confuse more that enlighten. It all has to do with language, experience and meaning. Human being take input (what our 5 senses tell us) and then our brain filters that input through previous experiences and conditioning. We end up with a "library" of references with distinct meanings attached to those references. What most of us don't realize is those meanings are totally an internal construct (and these meanings are often arbitrary, but can be changed). We store these representations in our brains sort of like a map. Which means they are not the experiences themselves, they are representations. NLP has provided a way to code the subjectivity of these representations in such a way that it allows us to manipulate them in useful ways. Such as: completely changing the meaning attached to a horrible event, or reducing or increasing the impact that some event has on you currently. Even more interesting is that each of us organizes this coding in different ways. There is a syntax to this coding of subjective experience. What this means is that I can extract the exact way in which someone subjectively accomplishes a task and make it repeatable. For instance, supertrader claims he's totally intuitive and doesn't really know how he does what he does but is great at it. With the process I'm referring to I can duplicate supertraders results because I'm able to duplicate all of his internal processes, that he may not even be consciously aware of. How do you do this? I simply can't explain it here. It's not terribly complicated, but it does take some time. And it's probably not for everybody. You need to have an extremely open mind, have a curious nature, and be willing to try some seemingly silly things. The payoffs though, can be enormous. Finally, hope there are no hard feelings from my previous response. Certainly none taken.
I'm really sorry for all these golf examples. I'm not trading right now, so I can't give trading examples. I used to feel positive for having good shots, and feel negative when I had bad shots. I guess some can say having those negative feelings will encourage you to become better. I guess touching a hot stove resulting in negative feedback, which is set in memory, can prevent you from getting burned again. Yes this is true, but I feel it wasn't very beneficial for me during competition. The times when I played the best, I felt neutral. I tried to mimick Pete Sampras. Ever watch him play? Man... you can never tell if he's playing the best game of his life, or his worse. I tried to think like him on the golf course. If I hit a bad shot... oh well. Shit happens. I gotta look at the big picture. One shot will not determine my whole round. I actually started to feel good when I hit both good and bad shots. If I hit a bad shot, then I felt as if I have encountered another challenge that I will overcome. The game became more pleasurable and the score became better. Maybe this has some relevance to trading, but that wasn't my point for the given example. From my experiences, I just feel reacting with a positive attitude towards whatever life gives you, can result in a rewarding life. Andy
You stated earlier how if one views it one way, another views it differently, then who's right? You said they're both right. How interesting. I guess it's like the question, is the glass half full or half empty? Interesting posts from you as well as others. Please do continue, you have an avid listener. Andy