9/28/2025 - An important change method in positive psychology is the solution-focused approach. From a solution perspective, asking the question, "Why do I sabotage my trading?" is the wrong question. What we want to ask is, "What might I be doing right when I'm not sabotaging my trading?" It's when our negative patterns are not occurring that we might be enacting our own solutions. For instance, I stopped making poor, impulsive trading decisions once I dedicated a meaningful portion of my profits to causes that I believe in. That changed my mindset. I was trading to help others--a powerful motivation for a psychologist! Just as I would not act on impulse while helping a client in therapy, I won't do so if my trading is designed to help those in need. By tapping into a new and more powerful motivation, the problem ceases to exist.
I've seen this dynamic many times among traders who trade in teams: they become much more consistent and disciplined because their motivation to not let others down is stronger than their need for momentary P/L. What makes team-based trading so powerful is the opportunity to share many ideas and observations, but also the opportunity to draw upon social motivations that overpower our most negative impulses. Structuring our trading the right way is the best psychological practice!
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9/26/2025 - A powerful technique for overcoming the patterns that sabotage our trading is to actively mentally rehearse those patterns while we are training our brains to stay calm and focused. In other words, we vividly imagine drawdown scenarios, missed opportunities, and other situations that can hijack our mindset. While we're engaged in those visualizations, we can be connected to a brain wave biofeedback device that tells us in real time when we're in the zone and when we're not. We keep repeating the "tilt" scenarios in our visualizations until they lose their ability to disrupt our mindsets. Repetition normalizes experience. When we normalize negative market outcomes, they no longer sabotage our trading.
Indeed, using breaks from trading to renew our focus through
biofeedback work makes us more resilient in our emotional responses. Rehearsing our trading plans and rules before the start of the market day while keeping ourselves in states of focus builds a resilient performance mindset.
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9/25/2025 - One of the most frustrating issues I hear from traders is that they find themselves not following their own rules. This creates a double sense of failure in that they miss opportunities and also feel that they have sabotaged their own success. In my own trading, this has typically occurred when fear of loss overwhelms sound planning. Although a trade is working out, I may see very short-term price action going against me and quickly exit the trade. Many times, that short-term countermovement is precisely where I could be adding to my position!The cognitive techniques discussed in The Daily Trading Coach book have been especially helpful in eliminating this sabotage. The idea behind cognitive work is that our problems occur because of how we talk to ourselves. If we can learn to identify and challenge our negative thinking, we can distance ourselves from it and act upon our best judgement. One variation of this work that I've written about is imagining that the things you're telling yourself are being said to you by a person you hate and who would want to see you fail. Imagine that this enemy of yours is shouting in your ear to get out of the trade that's working for you because you might lose your profits.
What would you say to that person? Chances are good that you would tell them to shut the f*ck up!
In other words, if someone you can't stand said to you what you're saying to you, you wouldn't buy into it. You would clearly see that it's a sabotage.
Cognitive work helps us identify in real time how we're talking to ourselves so that we can decide whether or not to act upon it. Many of our greatest emotional problems are because we've learned (and overlearned) negative thought patterns. By thinking about our thinking, we can evaluate our situations more objectively and do what's right--in markets, but also in relationships and other areas of life.
I will offer more on how to change our thought processes in coming posts--
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