Friday, June 05, 2009

Trading Psychology: View From a Trading Psychologist

All psychological change starts with three steps of progress:

1) Recognizing a pattern of thought, feeling, and/or behavior that is associated with unwanted consequences;

2) Consciously, willfully interrupting that pattern, so that you avoid its consequences;

3) Consciously, willfully enacting a different, more constructive pattern of thought and behavior to produce new, corrective emotional experiences.

Psychological change is all about creating new endings to old stories. Half of the battle is simply recognizing repetitive problem patterns as they occur, reminding yourself that you've seen this movie before, and direct your attention and efforts elsewhere, in a more constructive direction.

All the tools of behavioral, cognitive, solution-focused, and psychodynamic brief therapy approaches are simply techniques to recognize and interrupt our old ways and replace them with personal "best practices".
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