Psychology / Mentalism
April 12, 2012
In
psychology, mentalism refers to those branches of study that
concentrate on mental perception and thought processes, like cognitive
psychology. This is in opposition to disciplines, such as behaviorism,
that see psychology as a structure of causal relationships to
conditioned responses and seek to prove this hypothesis through
scientific methods and experimentation.The reactive mind does not store memories as we know them. It stores particular types of mental image pictures called engrams. Engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full “unconsciousness.”
“Unconsciousness” could be caused by the shock of an accident, anesthetic used for an operation, the pain of an injury or the delirium of illness. During these times, the analytical mind shuts down in full or in part and the reactive mind cuts in, in full or in part. An engram exists below the individual’s awareness level yet it can be activated so as to enforce its content, and can cause unevaluated, unknowing and unwanted fears, emotions, pains and psychosomatic illnesses.
For example, a man playing baseball is hit in the head by a pitcher’s ball and knocked out. Someone yells out to the pitcher, “You are no good.” Although the man is unconscious, these words and everything else going on are recorded in an engram; the smell of the dirt where he lay, the feeling of sweat on his brow and the sensation of heat from the afternoon sun. Months or even years after the incident, while watching a baseball game, many of these factors recorded in the engram are present in his current environment. These can re-stimulate the engram. The man suddenly and inexplicably gets a headache. He might also feel that he was “no good.” This engram in the reactive mind has been re-stimulated. The reactive mind is attempting to “prevent” the man from “getting himself into danger.” The reactive mind is not very intelligent.
WHAT ARE YOUR TRADING ENGRAMS?
...is it in your favor?
One of the reasons why people lose money in the market is lack of trading knowledge. No proper education on how the market moves. People think that they can quickly make money by simply investing in the stock market without proper education so they take short cuts and refuse to improve their trading knowledge. The result is, these people most of the time end up scared of the market after taking huge losses - that's what we call trading engrams. What is an engram?
Engram: "a mental image picture which is a recording of an experience containing pain, unconsciousness and a real or fancied threat to survival. It is a recording in the reactive mind of something which actually happened to an individual in the past and which contained pain and unconsciousness ... It must, by definition, have impact or injury as part of its content. These engrams are a complete recording, down to the last accurate detail, of every perception present in a moment of partial or full unconsciousness." (source: wikipedia )
An engram literally gets embedded into your body's cells, it's that powerful! When you are trading and become disappointed with what is happening, you are creating engrams. Every time you lose money in the stock market and something doesn't go right, the emotion you feel creates an engram. You embed that not only in the brain cells, but you embed that in your body's cells all the way to your fingers. That is why you have a hard time with the market, you have programmed yourself to always have a hard time with the market! Unless you change your engrams, your experience with the market will never change!
An engram becomes a belief. It is a belief that is not floating anymore but is now planted solidly within you. It is a belief that has been morphed into the cells of the brain and body. It becomes part of you. It is expected results in any similar situation.
Once you have a belief morphed into the brain, your results will become whatever you have programmed in there. Whatever experience you engram into yourself with your emotions is what your experiences will be in similar situations, time after time, throughout your life. Your life right now is a precise picture of what you believe. Your trading results show what you believe. Unless you reprogram your brain with engrams of your experiences being consistently profitable in the market, your past results will be what you continue getting!
HOW DO WE CHANGE THESE ENGRAMS?
... By changing our repeated experiences.
Invest in yourself! Get a thorough education before you continue in your trading business! You are definitely worth it and so is your trading balance!
Your trading success is my only goal. I understand the key to successful trading is in retraining your brain. A large portion of your success in the market is because of your mental conditioning. When you approach the market as a place of risk, potential loss, fear or that you must win; you will lose money. The market rewards you when you operate with understanding of how and why it works the way it does.
Once you fully understand how trading truly works, THE MONEY COMES! You'll get rewarded beyond your imagination!
Providing yourself a complete in-depth education of all aspects of trading is the very best and cheapest investment you can make!
Your Subconscious Mind Has Been Pre-programmed To Sabotage Your Trading Account
July 14, 2012
July 14, 2012
Dealing With E-Mini Mentalism
In psychology, mentalism
is an umbrella term that refers to those branches of study that
concentrate on mental perception and thought processes, in other words,
consciousness, like cognitive psychology. This is in opposition to disciplines, most notably behaviorism,
that believe the study of psychology should focus on the structure of
causal relationships to conditioned responses, that is to say behaviors,
and seek to prove this hypothesis through scientific methods and
experimentation. Over the course of the history of psychology, mentalism
and behaviorism have clashed, with one or the other representing the
dominant paradigm of psychological investigation. (Source: Wikipedia)
Professional
E-Mini traders know that to be successful, you must remove emotion from
your trading. Traders without sufficient experience often make the
mistake of thinking they are emotionless, only to find themselves
pumping massive amounts of adrenalin and testosterone into their systems
from being in a losing trade.
Professional
E-Mini traders know that trading without emotion requires a proven
trading plan. Before entering any trade, experienced traders know their
reasons for entering and exiting.
E-Mini
precognitive subliminal trading creates a clear trading plan for you to
follow, so you will not second-guess yourself, nor find yourself
bargaining with the Trading Gods.
Human beings
are hard wired to feel certain emotions. The vast majority of us
experience fear and greed, especially during the trading process. When
we lose money we experience anxiety as trading accounts drop in value.
When the losses mount, anxiety turns to fear as portfolio values drop
below our comfort levels. If losses continue to mount, fear can turn
into panic.
Consider the high percentage of
novice E-Mini traders who never become successful over the long term.
The overwhelming majority of individuals empty their first live account
TWICE! Why is it so hard to become successful?
"Conscious Effort alone is never going to be enough!" …And you can’t fool the subconscious mind.
Your
subconscious mind has an internal protection switch when confronted
with fear or anxiety. When the adrenalin amounts have reached sufficient
levels to engage in flight or fight levels, the brain seeks an end
solution. Fight causes decisions that blind the senses and results in
aggressive decisions in order placements of entry and exit, eventually
draining an account slowly over time.
Once the
brain realizes the account is slowly depleting the flight impulse
becomes another option. Flight includes the subconscious self-sabotage
of one's own account for the simple purpose of eliminating the constant
overabundance of adrenalin in the system. Elevated heart rates and the
resulting constant state of anxiety causing nervous tension are now on
the radar. The brains self-defense mechanism subconsciously devises a
solution.
Inadvertently the subconscious mind
is deliberately blowing your account by switching into protection mode
whereby relieving all that stress on the system. No more account? No
more stress!!! No more problem!!! The quicker this all happens, the
better…. Self-sabotage at its finest.
You see,
your subconscious mind knows when you aren’t ready and whatever gains
you have made were pure luck. It knows that you still haven’t acquired
and developed the skills to be a truly proficient trader, to deal with
the realities of trading.
It’s one thing to know what to do.
It is an entirely different matter to know how to do it well.
And
at the time, you didn’t even really understand what you need to get
good at, besides of course execution and sticking to your trading
system.
Reduce Emotions While Trading:
Are
you finding excuses not to trade? Too groggy in the morning, need to
mow the lawn before the sun comes up, need to do this, that, everything
but trade!?
Do you now simply sit with your cup
of coffee in your hand every morning and watch your trading platform
because your confidence has turned to doubt?
Have
you experienced trading losses that have affected your
self-confidence? Is it so bad that you’re now having trouble “pulling
the trigger”?
Do not put yourself into a
position where one trade can make or break your account. The less each
trade means to your account, the less emotion you will have.
People
do not like to be wrong. After we take losses, we are angry, and want
to get back at the market. We’ll enter trades just to get our money
back, without forethought or consideration. A trade made irrationally
from the beginning is doomed to fail. This is commonly referred to as
“revenge trading”.
Games are meant for
excitement. E-Mini trading is for generating income, and should not be
used for excitement. E-Mini trading is a very profitable business, and
should be treated as such.
The whole
‘Discipline’ fallacy, is only a deviation from the real issue. It’s not a
matter of discipline, it’s about becoming the trader with the skills,
know-how, and tools to have the real confidence.
Confidence
is the ability to create a trading plan and then execute according to
that plan. In order to do this a trader must learn to stand outside of
himself and become emotionally detached from the trade.
When
a trader creates a plan and executes, either making a profit or taking a
small acceptable loss as allowed for in the plan, this creates a
positive feedback loop. If trading is executed in this way and is
repeated over and over again, then confidence is developed.
When
you discover and develop the skills to become a real professional, to
be good at trading, but with a very conscious competence…
…that’s when things will change.
It‘s when you change. When you change, your subconscious will know it - and finally let you enjoy real success.
Only
when you change what you’ve been doing, when you stop looking for more
tools more indicators, and chose to become a more solid trader…
…only then will your subconscious stop sabotaging your efforts.
If
you want to put an END to self-sabotage in your trading, then doesn’t
it make sense to get the training that will transform you into the type
of trader?
Conclusion:
Studies
show that 90% of our mind's power is housed in the subconscious mind and
is responsible for our behaviors, habits, and performance. Our subconscious brain has over 200,000 times more processing capacity than our conscious brain.
Winning traders know this.
If
you have a system with a positive expectancy it can be very helpful in
building confidence since, more often than not, your system will produce
a profitable trade. Every positive trade is recorded in your
subconscious as positive feedback, which leads to the confidence to
trade more using your tested methodology.
As
you can see, our emotions control our every action, without us even
knowing it. The only way a trader can remove their emotions from
trading, is by following a pre-constructed pre-proven trading plan.
Training and convincing the subconscious mind that yes, they indeed are
consistent traders worthy of an account, and therefore the ultimate
by-product …….SUCCESS.
Horst
Analytical vs. Intuitive Trading… Our minds are divided into two parts: The sub-conscious mind and the conscious mind.
November 08, 2012
Intuition
can make you a much more effective trader, especially when you deal
with non-standard situations or in expedient decision making. Yet,
before you put more weight on intuitive choices, there are a few
important points you need to keep in mind.
When do you need intuition?
Decision making trading situations where intuitive approach can help most include the following.
- Expedient decision making and rapid response are required. The circumstances leave you no time to go through complete rational analysis.
- Fast paced change. The factors on which you base your analysis change rapidly.
- The problem is poorly structured due to lack of sufficient data.
- The factors and rules that you need to take into account are hard to articulate in an unambiguous way.
- You have to deal with ambiguous, incomplete, or conflicting information.
- There is no precedent.
What is intuition? …. The Sub-Conscious Mind
These instructions come from the conscious mind. Every time we say something like ” I suck at trading”, we enter these instructions into our sub-conscious mind. With enough repetition of these instructions, the sub-conscious mind has no choice but to follow them, resulting in the fact that you suck at trading.
If you have any form of self-sabotaging thoughts and wonder why you are not as good as you would like to be, then the reason is that you are programming your sub-conscious to guide you in the direction of these thoughts. Of course, the opposite is true also. If you consciously think of good thoughts and processes, these are the thoughts that will get programmed into your sub-conscious mind.
First,
what do I mean by intuition in the context of decision-making? While
different definitions emphasize different aspects, there are three key
features that characterize the intuitive mode of thinking.
- The process is dominated by your subconscious mind, even if you use your conscious mind to formulate or rationalize the final results. The subconscious mind can spit out your answer 200,000 times faster than the conscious mind. The subconscious mind can process 10,000 videos at one time, versus the conscious minds ability to decipher only 1.
- The information is processed in parallel rather than sequentially. Instead of going through a logical sequence of thoughts one by one, you see the situation more as a whole, with different fragments emerging in parallel.
- You are more connected with your emotions. For example, it may occur to you that an option you consider does not feel right, even though there is no clear logic to prove that.
Intuition versus analytical/rational analysis…. The Conscious Mind
The main
alternative to the intuition-based approach is analytical thinking. The
analytical decision making process relies mostly on quantitative,
scientific, engineering like analysis. You consciously analyze all the
options with precision. You formulate the main criteria for judging the
expected outcomes of your options and you assign certain weights to
those criteria to reflect their relative importance. Then, based on the
precise expected outcomes and their weights, you rate your options by
their perceived utility. Finally, you choose the option that has the
highest rating. It’s either “black or white”, without any “gray area”.
By the time you decide, the trade has long left the station, since it’s
a conscious analysis and decision rather than a subconscious one.
How it works
The
simplest way to make sense of why and how intuition works is to think
of it as an advanced pattern recognition technique. Your subconscious
mind somehow finds links between your new situation and various patterns
of your past experiences. You may not recall most of the details of
those experiences. And even if you did, it may be very hard to express
the lessons you have learned in a form acceptable for analytical
reasoning. Yet, your subconscious mind still remembers the patterns
learned. It can rapidly project your new circumstances onto those
patterns and send you a message of wisdom. That message comes as your
inner voice and will most likely be expressed in the language of your
feelings. For example, some of the options or solutions you consider may
not feel right to you, yet others do with a high degree of accuracy.
How to use intuition effectively
The first important thing to keep in mind is that when you rely on intuition. it is very important to do your homework to “INITIALLY PROGRAM” your
subconscious mind. The intuition will then and only then help you
navigate faster through much of unstructured data and can work around
certain gaps and conflicts in the available information. Yet, even
intuition can be misled if too many of your facts are wrong or missing.
Trust Your Sub-Conscious Mind:
In trading, when we are placed in unfamiliar situations or confronted with unknown problems, it is often a good idea to go with what feels best. Most of the time your sub-conscious mind knows what to do. Do not shut it out. Try to listen to it more and get in touch with it. If you have trained it properly, trust that it has your best interest at heart and allow it to lead you.
You know that feeling you get sometimes where you can’t explain why something does not feel right? You cannot explain why but you just know it. (For example a bad / good feeling you get when you meet a person for the first time.) This is your sub-conscious mind that has picked up something in the surrounding or situation that it knows is not right. Your sub-conscious mind can often pick up signs of market anxiety or confusion before you can logically deduce them. This is why you get that bad / good feeling sometimes. Learn to trust those feelings.
The sub-conscious mind is a survival mechanism. If trained properly you can use it to trade on auto pilot. If not trained properly it can lead you down the path of destruction by implementing self-survival tactics. It can devastate your trading account with self-sabotage in the process of protecting you from harm in forms of unnecessary stress, anxiety, and adrenalin. No funds left in your account… no more stress, problem solved.
Pay
very close attention to your emotional state. If you are stressed or in
a bad mood, your true inner voice will be distorted or lost in the
background of your strong negative feelings.
A similar effect may happen with strong positive feelings. If you want to hear your inner voice, get over the background of your strong feelings.
Know your inner self. Your emotions need be able to be self-transparent and understood with your conscious efforts to understand them. Like an oil pressure gauge in your car. You need to be able to monitor your emotional pressure and act accordingly. The needle on your emotional gauge needs to be in the normal/neutral range to function properly. Needle too low or too high needs to be recognized and taken into consideration before trading. Feel them through or let them go. Take a walk. Do something refreshing. Say your prayers. Forgive and accept. Un-clutter your mind. TAKE SOME TIME OFF. If the emotional needle in your gauge isn’t in the middle where it needs to be, don’t trade until your emotional pressure is back to normal. Self-awareness is one of the MOST important aspects of trading. Following this procedure is an effective way to feed your subconscious mind with all the relevant data it needs to listen to your inner voice and also un-clutter your mind.
A similar effect may happen with strong positive feelings. If you want to hear your inner voice, get over the background of your strong feelings.
Know your inner self. Your emotions need be able to be self-transparent and understood with your conscious efforts to understand them. Like an oil pressure gauge in your car. You need to be able to monitor your emotional pressure and act accordingly. The needle on your emotional gauge needs to be in the normal/neutral range to function properly. Needle too low or too high needs to be recognized and taken into consideration before trading. Feel them through or let them go. Take a walk. Do something refreshing. Say your prayers. Forgive and accept. Un-clutter your mind. TAKE SOME TIME OFF. If the emotional needle in your gauge isn’t in the middle where it needs to be, don’t trade until your emotional pressure is back to normal. Self-awareness is one of the MOST important aspects of trading. Following this procedure is an effective way to feed your subconscious mind with all the relevant data it needs to listen to your inner voice and also un-clutter your mind.
Trust Your Sub-Conscious Mind:
In trading, when we are placed in unfamiliar situations or confronted with unknown problems, it is often a good idea to go with what feels best. Most of the time your sub-conscious mind knows what to do. Do not shut it out. Try to listen to it more and get in touch with it. If you have trained it properly, trust that it has your best interest at heart and allow it to lead you.
You know that feeling you get sometimes where you can’t explain why something does not feel right? You cannot explain why but you just know it. (For example a bad / good feeling you get when you meet a person for the first time.) This is your sub-conscious mind that has picked up something in the surrounding or situation that it knows is not right. Your sub-conscious mind can often pick up signs of market anxiety or confusion before you can logically deduce them. This is why you get that bad / good feeling sometimes. Learn to trust those feelings.
The sub-conscious mind is a survival mechanism. If trained properly you can use it to trade on auto pilot. If not trained properly it can lead you down the path of destruction by implementing self-survival tactics. It can devastate your trading account with self-sabotage in the process of protecting you from harm in forms of unnecessary stress, anxiety, and adrenalin. No funds left in your account… no more stress, problem solved.
Horst
