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Originally Posted by gosu » There are beliefs about trading and then there are truths. Aligning the former with the latter is the foundation upon which knowledge, skill, and experience can be built. You are trained to deal with the former.
A person who feels anxiety because he doesn't know what he is doing while in a trade is being quite rational. There is nothing to emotionally regulate, as you would say. His emotions are working fine and in actuality being helpful. They are telling him he has no business being in the market unless he intends to make a donation. No amount of professional therapy to "de-couple" what he's feeling from what he's doing changes that fact.
If what I say is short sighted to you, it may be because I do not make trading out to be more than what it is to sell to people. You do state a truth that no one at the start is fully equipped to extract. It is also a truth that most will never become equipped regardless of how many hours they spend on a therapist's couch. |
We certainly come from different positions. I hold that truth is in the eye of the beholder. Or what I call the observer. We do not see reality, we see shadows cast -- and there is always an observer interpreting what it is experiencing. Traders come to hold certain assumptions about the market. Some of these assumptions have been worked out and have become an effective way of dancing with the market. Yet, the market does not care what assumptions you attempt to place on it, nor does have awareness of the truths placed upon it by men.
The people I work with usually have traded for a number of years. And they are successful in sim trading. They know HOW to trade a methodology what works in a classroom. It is when risk of capital is put in play that their "truths" about the market are challenged. It is at this point that I make the grounded assessment (not truth) that the trader is not separating uncertainty from worry or fear. This situation is highly trainable. The assumptions of self that have become hardwired as self limiting beliefs (their unexamined truth) are not failing because they don't know how to trade, but because they are not trained to operate in an environment of uncertainty. People will have to re-organize their beliefs about operating in an environment of uncertainty and their skill to manage it, but it is highly possible if that trader accepts full responsible for outcome.
You're right in my estimation about "years of time on a therapist's couch". Being a licensed therapist myself, I came to the conclusion that most therapuetic approaches fall short of transformation of the self. They are good about getting through certain passages, but not about how to equip yourself to design a life worth living. This takes an expanded view of human potential.
Fundamentally, I teach traders to use a set of skills and tools by which they do brain surgury on their belief system. Not a whole bunch of time on the couch. Trading becomes a great place to see up front and close the trader's beliefs about self in action. There is no hiding from the "truth" as it has been organized within the self. Yet most find that their "truths" are only unexamined assumptions about the world that drive their perception. It is at this moment that the assumptions behind the self limiting beliefs can be observed and re-constructed. Building your beliefs into a manager of risk rather than an avoider of risk is then the possibility. Anxiety at this point can be regulated and listened to, not from an avoidant observer, but from a disciplined and impartial observer. Very different outcomes. The "truth" they see allows them to be present to their trading very differently. The gap between sim trading and live trading narrows as they train their state of mind to embrace uncertainty from a perspecttive of discipline, patience, courage, and impartiality. A far cry from the anxious state of mind that had them hesitating and impulsing as fear sweep their thinking capacity away.
By the way, thank you. You have helped me write my next article.
Rande Howell
06-07-2011, 07:00 PM
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