Conquering the Eight

Roadblocks to Successful Trading

Mastering your

Inner Game

Mindful Trading: Learning

Peak Performance Trading

Presented by Rande Howell, MEd, LPC

Author of:

Mindful Trading:

Mastering Your Emotions and the Inner Game

If You Know HOW to Trade,

What Stops You From Breaking Through

to the Next Level?

Where Are “You” in Your Trading System?

The Components

of Successful Trading Trading System

(Platform)

Methodology

(risk management)

Trading Psychology

(State of Mind)

Without integration of each component, you are an

incomplete trader – risk is stacked against you.

What Produces Trading Success?

“The Holy Grail of Trading is not found

‘OUT THERE’ – It is within you, waiting

for you to discover it.”

80% of trading is in your head

How do you develop the mindset of a

peak performance trader?

The Purpose of This Presentation:

What Your Brain Sees When the

Untrained Mind Experiences Uncertainty

Biological Fear and Psychological Discomfort are not

Separated by the Brain and the Psychology that comes from it.

You have to re-train the Brain/Mind.

What is Emotion?

the body/brain/mind’s triggering to any

disruption to familiar status

Components of an emotion (fear)

1. Arousal – the body cranking up

2. Feeling - subjective experience of the

emotion. Thinking is compromised.

3. Motivation – what the emotion is telling you

to do (avoid, attack, approach)

4. Meaning (the assumption that becomes

wired into your brain as belief)

5. Temperament -- genetics

Separating Uncertainty, Worry and Fear

• Uncertainty – nothing can be

predicted with absolute certainty –

only in degrees of probability. Yet

your biology and brain are biased

to predict with certainty.

• Worry – negative attribution of the

future. Your brain is a negative

assessment machine.

• Fear – All thought is hijacked.

Visceral experience of avoidance.

The Mind You Bring to Trading

Fear Based

Trading

Impulse Based

Trading

Triggering of

Uncertainty and Risk

Self Limiting Beliefs:

Psychological Organization of Self

Mindful

Trading

Attack:

Historical

Pattern

Avoid:

Historical

Pattern

(Run, Hide,

Freeze, Submit)

Approach:

New Pattern

Creation

The Goal! 90% of Traders Lose Money Here

I. The Impact of Emotions

on Your Trading

The Brain on Fear

Until Mastered,

Fear Blocks

Development of

Potential

To Develop as a Trader, Fear has to be Confronted to Change

Your Established Pattern of Reacting to an Uncertain World

The Brain and Mind on Fear

• Your brain is a negative assess- ment machine (harmful intent bias)

• Your brain does not distinguish Uncertainty from Fear

• It organizes you to avoid uncertainty and fear (comfort zone)

• Then, it forms self-fulfilling patterns based on the avoidance of fear and uncertainty

• The patterns go on automatic and dominate your state of mind (you find what you fear).

• You trade from avoidance or greed rather than from calm impartiality

This is the “You” That Trades. Biology has to be overcome

The Roadblocks that Dominate a Trader’s Mind:

The Thinking You Brought into Trading IS NOT

the Thinking That Will Make You Successful

1) Fear of uncertainty (hesitation)

2) Fear of loss (pulling the trigger)

3) Fear of missing out (impulse and exits)

4) Fear-based urgency to make up for prior losses (revenge trading)

5) Fear of not being right (making a mistake)

6) Fear of inadequacy (external validation)

7) Fear of self sabotage (blowing yourself up)

8) Fear of success or failure

9) Fear of Growth and Change (the box of your comfort zone)

The Cost of a Fear-Based Mindset What Happens if You Don’t Address This?

90% of traders lose money because they do

not know how to conquer their fear.

Emotional

State

State of

Mind (your

thinking)

Perceptual

Map (what

you see as

possible)

The Actions

You Take

The Reality

You Create

(profits and

losses)

Emotional

Regulation

Feedback Loop

Leaving Your Emotions at the Door is NOT an Option

Instead, You can Design which ones Create your Trading Mind

(Your

trading)

You Must Manage the Biology of

Emotion Before You Get to the Mind

II. Becoming Mindful of our Thoughts:

Who is Doing “YOUR” Trading?

(You and Your Thoughts Are Not the Same)

Becoming MINDFUL Begins Here

• If you ignore the internal dialog, a good trading plan is wasted

• No one escapes the internal dialog

• Learning to manage the fear-based internal dialog is fundamental to successful, mindful trading

• Managing and expanding the internal dialog is the essence of a strong psychological trading plan.

YOU must become the

Author of your Story

The Self Limiting Beliefs

Behind Your Presenting Fears

Fear Based Thinking Shows Up in Our Mind as Thoughts

Our avoidance of them is what keeps us fused to them

1. A sense of Inadequacy – “I’ll never be good enough,

smart enough. I can’t make mistakes. Mistakes are proof of my

inadequacy.”

2. A sense of not mattering – “I only matter based on

what I do, not what I am.” Self loathing or Arrogance.

3. A sense of being unworthy – “I have to prove

myself by performance to have value.”

4. Powerlessness – “Nothing I do seems to make a

difference. I’m doomed.” Victimhood.

Dance of the

Internal Dialog

The Trading Committee of the

Fear-Based Internal Dialog The Inner Critic

The voice that judges you

The voice that criticizes

Never measuring up

Never good enough

Tempts (You need more)

Predicts Doom

The Adapted Voice

The Doubter (I never win)

Chicken Little (negative appraisal)

Gambler (leave no money on table)

Perfectionist (win every time)

Entitled One (greed)

Con (lying to yourself)

Fraud (pretending to look good)

Orphan (missing out)

Saboteur (Blowing Things Up)

Alpha (have to win to prove worth)

You are born into these self-limiting beliefs,

but that’s no reason to stay stuck there.

III. Developing the Mind to

Become a Successful Trader

Managing the Inner Game for Profitable

Trading

Awakening the Heroes Transforming Your Internal Dialog and Possibility

Building a Brain/Mind for Trading

The Mind is where a Rivalry of Competitors Struggle for Dominance.

This requires a new understanding of the Brain and Mind.

The Inner Game:

Your Mind as a Committee Meeting

Where Your Beliefs Are Traded!

• The Internal Dialog controls the story you create about trading

• Being mindless of the voices on the stage of the self leads to fear-based or impulse-based trading

• Disrupting the grip of fear opens you to the potential living within you

• You have the power to reinvent the conversations of the self

Who Controls Your

Trading Committee?

If you remain

mindless, you

continue trading from

self-limiting beliefs

Changing Self-Limiting Beliefs • Most psychological systems change your surface

material for short term gain (NLP, general meditation, bio-feedback, etc.)

• The core material that triggers our primitive patterns of fear must be addressed for long term re-organization of the self.

• Compassion is the emotion that reorganizes the self for internal validation rather than external validation.

• Re-building the Committee of the Mind Creates a New Playing Field for Competition.

Beating yourself up doesn’t work, and continues self-limiting beliefs!

The Stages of Long Term Change

Stage 1

Emotional

Regulation

Stage 2

Mindfulness

Stage 3

Disrupting the

Internal Dialog

Stage 4

Developing peak

performance

elements of self

Stage 5

Re-organizing

the trading mind Peak Performance

State of Mind for

Trading

With an empowered

Mindset, you approach

uncertainty from a

position of Discipline,

Courage, Patience, and

Impartiality...

rather than Fear.

Who is going to populate your trading committee?

Rande Howell Traders State of Mind

Who’s in Charge of the Organization of

Your Trading Mind?

The Mind You Bring

to Trading

Impulsive

Fear Based

Mindset

Emotionally Regulated

Calm Focused

Mindset

Mindless Trading

Blind to the Internal Dialog

Mindful Trading

Command of Internal Dialog

Inner Critic

as Source of

Self Limiting

Beliefs

Adapted Voice

Reacting from

Fear or

Impulse

Ruler (discipline)

Sage

(impartial)

Passion

Warrior

(courage)

Patience

Unaware of other Potential

Trader’s State of Mind Loser’s State of Mind

1.

2.

3.

The Mind Designed

for Trading

www.tradersstateofmind.com

Be the Change.

How Do You Move Head Knowledge of How to

Trade to Performance-Based Mindset?

1. What you learned here?

1. Brain/emotion/mind

2. Naming your fear

3. Your Voice of Fear

2. Lots of good stuff on the website

to further your journey

3. 20% discount on Mindful Trading:

Mastering Your Emotions and the

Inner Game

4. http://www.tradersstateofmind.com/c

atalog/item/7367304/9809436.htm