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 Trading Psychology

(risk management) (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

The Purpose of This Presentation:

How do you develop the mindset of a

peak performance trader?
 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
Triggering of
Uncertainty and Risk

Self Limiting Beliefs:

Psychological Organization of Self
Approach: Avoid: Attack:
New Pattern Historical (Run, Hide, Historical
Freeze, Submit) Pattern
Creation Pattern

Mindful Fear Based Impulse Based

Trading Trading Trading
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 of Perceptual The Actions

State Mind (your Map (what You Take
thinking) you see as (Your
possible) trading)
Emotional
The Reality
Regulation
You Create
Feedback Loop
(profits and
losses)
Leaving Your Emotions at the Door is NOT an Option
Instead, You can Design which ones Create your Trading Mind
 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 YOU must become the
plan. Author of your Story
 The Self Limiting Beliefs
Behind Your Presenting Fears
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.

Fear Based Thinking Shows Up in Our Mind as Thoughts

Our avoidance of them is what keeps us fused to them
 The Trading Committee of the
Fear-Based Internal Dialog
The Inner Critic The Adapted Voice
The voice that judges you The Doubter (I never win)
Chicken Little (negative appraisal)
The voice that criticizes Gambler (leave no money on table)
Perfectionist (win every time)
Never measuring up
Entitled One (greed)
Never good enough Con (lying to yourself)
Fraud (pretending to look good)
Tempts (You need more) Orphan (missing out)
Saboteur (Blowing Things Up)
Predicts Doom Alpha (have to win to prove worth)

Dance of the
Internal Dialog
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!
Who Controls Your
Trading Committee?

If you remain
mindless, you
continue trading from
self-limiting beliefs

• 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
 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
Stage 5
Regulation
Re-organizing
the trading mind Stage 2
Peak Performance
Mindfulness
State of Mind for
Trading

Stage 4
Stage 3
Developing peak
performance Disrupting the
elements of self Internal Dialog
 Who’s in Charge of the Organization of
Your Trading Mind?

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

 The Mind You Bring The Mind Designed
to Trading for Trading

Impulsive Emotionally Regulated

1.
Fear Based Calm Focused
Mindset Mindset

Mindless Trading Mindful Trading

2. Command of Internal Dialog
Blind to the Internal Dialog

Ruler (discipline)
Unaware of other Potential
3.
Sage Warrior
(impartial) (courage)
Inner Critic Adapted Voice
as Source of Reacting from
Self Limiting Fear or Passion Patience
Beliefs Impulse
Loser’s State of Mind Trader’s State of Mind
 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

www.tradersstateofmind.com