How We Sabotage Our Trading

 

Above you can see the floor of my office, where well over 30 books are in various stages of being read--simultaneously!  My technique for writing is to read and read and read different authors on a given topic and eventually something jumps out at me as an integrating idea.  It's really no different from looking at charts and market information from different time frames and suddenly picking up on a directional move in the making.  Analyzing, analyzing, analyzing: that takes focus.  The creativity comes from the synthesizing:  putting it together into a coherent picture.

One of the main topics of my reading is meditation.  It turns out that there are *many* different forms of meditation, many of which are quite unlike our common conception of the Eastern practice.  As I explain in the recent Forbes article, the most important function of meditation is to build focus and amplify our experience.  The problem is that the great majority of people who try meditation don't pursue it long enough to achieve that amplification.

The way in which we often sabotage our trading is through our automatic, negative thought patterns.  As the cognitive therapists emphasize, we typically learn negative habits of thinking, where automatic thoughts take over.  These can be self-critical thoughts, repetitive thoughts of being a victim, worry thoughts, etc.  What is not well appreciated is that such automatic thinking is meditation in reverse.  When we focus on our negative thoughts, we internalize negativity.  Ironically, we end up using our magnifying glass to accentuate the very thinking that sabotages us:  in trading, and in life.

We internalize what we focus on and that shapes who we become.  That can uplift us or it can sabotage us--

Further Reading:

Why We Fail To Reach Our Potential

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