[jonbig04]

"you will miss a great set up but the fear and frustration of that reality is the emotional architecture behind the worst trades."

well said

[minoo]

http://www.traderdna.com/learningCenter/articles.html
Read Whats missing in Trading Psychology
Other articles are good too.

Ta Minoo

[Eiger]

Originally Posted by minoo »

http://www.traderdna.com/learningCenter/articles.html
Read Whats missing in Trading Psychology ...
Ta Minoo

He's right. Goals, imagery and positive self-talk (affirmations) have little impact on performance. A recent analysis of all published studies assessing setting goals, guided imagery, self-talk, and other 'traditional' interventions showed no effect on performance. A few studies that used some of these in combination showed some positive outcomes, but there are too few studies to call the combinations reliable. This was conducted by Zella Moore (2008), a sport psychologist, and was well-researched.

Mindfulness is different. Good research shows positive effects on performance. With practice, mindfulness improves attention and concentration. Notably, it does not change negative thoughts. It does, however, give you some distance from what your mind is telling you. With practice, you can see thoughts for what they are - just thoughts, not necessarily reality or the truth.

Most of us are 'fused' with our thoughts, meaning we tend to buy into whatever our mind is telling us. Here's a good example: You enter a trade and it begins to show profit. As soon as it does, the mind is saying, "Hey, you better take your profit before it turns against you. Don't be foolish, just take the profit." And, so you do. You get a small profit and then watch as the market goes further in your direction. You've cut your winner short. And, what does your mind tell you now? "Idiot, you should have stayed in. Look at all the profit you missed. Will you ever learn?!" Which do you believe? The unfortunate truth for many is that we believe both!

Mindfulness allows for us to decenter from all that the mind is telling us and take a different perspective - one of observing our thoughts rather than inviting them in for tea. Facinating research with elite atheletes is showing that a significant difference betwen the elite and the average athelete is in their level of cognitive activity (i.e., the amount of their thoughts). It is not that the elite don't have anxious and other negative thoughts. They do. They have just learned over years of practice and performance not to buy into them. They turn their attention to the performance task-at-hand rather than focus on their thoughts (which helps keep the level of thoughts lower). We now know that things like mindfulness can aid in and accelerate this process.

Eiger

[cowseathay]

Hi Eiger,

Thanks for that post. Could you possibly point me to some resources about mindfulness without all the mumbo jumbo--just in plain English? Also, if you still have the sources to the research about the cognitive activity with athletes, could you cite the articles here?

Thanks a lot.

[Tasuki]

My best answers to a wandering concentration are:
1) breathing exercises
2) pandora.com
God I love that website. I have created a bunch of "stations" that suit me personally for keeping my attention:
Johann Sebastian Bach station
Antonio Soler station
Luigi Boccherini station
Sylvius Leopold Weiss station

The latter station is all lute music, which I personally find very calming. Heaven knows, you might find Led Zeppelin calming. Whatever keeps you focussed yet calmed, that's the key, and Pandora is wonderful for this.

Breathing exercises require some sort of training in yoga to do them right. Both the Hindus and the Buddhists excel in this sort of thing. Personally, I do the Hong Sau technique taught by Paramahansa Yogananda.

[Eiger]

Originally Posted by cowseathay »

Hi Eiger,

Thanks for that post. Could you possibly point me to some resources about mindfulness without all the mumbo jumbo--just in plain English? Also, if you still have the sources to the research about the cognitive activity with athletes, could you cite the articles here?

Thanks a lot.

You can send a PM with email and I will forward to you a couple of mindfulness exercises I use with traders. It will take a few days, though, as my main computer and backup drive are at the tech's being worked on.

I'd be happy to list the articles, but there are many and unless you have access to a major university library system that includes a strong emphasis on medicine, science and psychology, it won't be very helpful to you as the journal titles will seem obscure.

The main point of the research to date is that elite performance is associated with lower levels of left-hemisphere cortical activity during performance and training activities. It is a distinguishing characteristic of elite performance. The left cortex is associated with verbal-linguistic activity, which is simply a precise way of saying that the left side of the brain is where most of our thinking occurs. High levels of thinking, however, hinder performance primarily because attention is directed away from the performance task and towards one's private experiences of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Worry and anxious thoughts create very high levels of verbal-linguistic activity (thoughts) which occur in the left-hemisphere cortical areas. Mindfulness has been shown to reduce cortical activity in general, and appears to be especially useful with worry and anxious thoughts. Greater awareness of one's own attentional process is also fostered by mindfulness. What all this means is that through mindfulness practice, a trader can reduce overall worry and anxiety, and when performance-hindering thoughts do occur, the mindful trader is better able to notice them without becoming ensnared by them, and then to self-regulate where they put their attention -- either on their worries and anxious thoughts or on what needs to be done to manage the trade. This helps align them mentally with other high level performers.

Hope this is helpful,

Eiger

[Eiger]

Originally Posted by Tasuki »

My best answers to a wandering concentration are:
1) breathing exercises
2) pandora.com
God I love that website....

The breath is a classic point of focus for mindfulness and meditation. Whenever you notice your mind wandering into an unwanted or disrupting space, focus on your breath. Yoga and pranyama (yogic breathing) is really not about the postures, but all about preparing the body and mind for meditation. Yoga has a 3,000+ year tradition in the study of the mind and consciousness, and has a lot to offer in this regard.

Pandora - what a cool site - thanks for this

[zdo]

cowseathay, et al,

If you need, PM me with an off forum email and I can send you a plain english guide to mindfulness.