12/26/24 - To change a behavior, anchor that behavior to a distinctive state of mind and body. For example, let's say I want to work on sizing up my positions by a fixed percentage. During my workout before trading, while I'm lifting weights and jogging, I mentally rehearse the mindset of getting bigger. I focus on the feeling of fitness and how I'm making my trading more fit. When the market opens, I immerse myself in the thoughts and feelings of fitness and mentally lift the weights of my trading size. Over time, the link between my physically fit mindset and my trading mindset grows stronger, creating new pathways in my mind and in my behavior. This is but one example of how we can catalyze change by shifting our state of mind.
12/24/24 - Albert Einstein famously observed that "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them". In other words, to solve a problem, we have to remove ourselves from the box that created the problem in the first place. "Thinking outside the box" is the hallmark of creativity. A parallel psychological principle is that we cannot solve our personal problems in the same state of consciousness that gave rise to the problems in the first place. Our states of mind and body constrain what we perceive and how we process what we perceive. All lasting psychological change occurs in unique, enhanced states of mind and body. This is creativity of consciousness. A major limitation of our trading psychology is that we try to change what we do but never escape the mindset that gave rise to our problems. My next post will describe how we can reprogram mind and body to create new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
We all know about the old joke where we tell someone to try as hard as they can to not think about a pink elephant. Of course, the harder they try, the more the image of the pink elephant intrudes in their consciousness. What we focus on grows. What we think about expands. What we dwell upon shapes our destiny. That's the lesson from Robin Sharma.So why, then, do we focus our attention on our trading problems, our trading mistakes, and our most negative trading patterns? Much of trading psychology is telling traders to not think about pink elephants.
Each of us has unique strengths. Each of us finds our greatest potential as traders by leveraging our talents and building skills around those. What if we simply focused on what we understand, what we do well, what makes sense to us? What if we're meant to break down, in exquisite detail, what we do during our best trades?
What we focus on grows. When we focus on our successes, our successes can expand and shape our destiny. Without that positive focus, can we truly hope to grow as risk-takers?
Further Reading:
Mastering the Positive Psychology of Trading
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