What we need to appreciate is that quieting our minds does not leave us with emptiness and boredom. When we achieve an inner peace, we discover a fullness we never knew was there.
That fullness is the soul.
Let's explore.
Achieving Stillness
Think of the self-talk that occurs throughout trading and following markets. You might be talking to yourself about the next great "setup"; you might be thinking about the profit or loss potential of that trade; you might be concerned about missing that trade; you might be worrying about the consequences of making that trade. If you're like most traders, your self-talk is pretty much a non-stop chatter.
The way we can appreciate that our self-talk is chatter is by imagining a situation in which someone is standing beside us saying the exact same things that are going on inside our heads. Visualize being at your desk in front of the screens and someone is hovering over you worrying about the next trade; talking about how much you've made or lost on the most recent trades; telling you to trade larger or smaller; expressing concern that you'll miss the trade; and on and on. The odds are pretty good that you'd reach over to that other person and tell them in so uncertain terms to shut the you-know-what up. You would simply want to focus on the market!
Remember how we started this book by talking about clutter: our cluttered lives and how those can be like a cluttered house? What we're seeing now is that our lives are cluttered because our minds are cluttered. We talk to ourselves in ways we would never tolerate from others. Immersed in all that inner chatter, we lose genuine contact with markets, genuine contact with others, and genuine contact with our selves.
All that self-talk, clutter, and chatter: that is ego. Talking to ourselves is the way our ego attaches itself to the world. We could be imagining scenarios of success, failure, rejection, retribution, happiness, sadness--it doesn't matter. We talk to ourselves about what we are attached to. And, with each episode of chatter, we strengthen those attachments.
When we quiet the ego, we can make genuine contact with the part of us buried by all the needs, desires, hopes, and fears. That is soul.
Why is this?
A great deal of trading consists of gathering information and developing ideas based upon what we learn. That, fundamentally, is a process of pattern recognition. An important part of trading is a creative activity in which we assemble fresh information in unique ways to uncover opportunities.
A cluttered mind cannot recognize patterns. Why? Because so much of our attention is drawn to our self talk that we cannot be immersed in the information before us. If we are not immersed, we cannot be in a flow state: by definition, we are not operating "in the zone." Only a quiet, empty mind can be full-filled with information. If the vessels of our minds are filled with chatter, there simply is not room for new, emerging information.
In a state of stillness, patterns that we have encountered repeatedly jump out at us. Our antennae best pick up signals if we are not actively broadcasting. Stillness is not a passive state; it is quite actively focused. When we quiet our self-talk, we become intensely receptive to our experience. If we're filling our heads about the next trade we're going to make or the one we just made, can we really understand what markets are trying to tell us?
========================
Slowing By Fasting
In Chapter Ten, we discussed the idea that the body can become a gateway to joy through such activities as dance. Now we're learning that the body can also become a path to radical peace.
We are familiar with fasting as a temporary withdrawal from food. When we pull back from the physical, we find it easier to tap into the spiritual. Across many spiritual traditions, from Islam to Christianity and Judaism, fasting accompanies serious worship. Consider, for example, the restrictions on eating during Ramadan, Lent, and Yom Kippur. When we celebrate, we eat, drink, and dance. But when we wish to connect to the Divine, we step back from physical pleasures and slow ourselves down. There is evidence that calorie restriction, as in intermittent fasting, can benefit mood and yield a greater sense of personal achievement, reward, and pride. When we decrease our dependence upon food, we may find a greater ability to attend to other, important aspects of life.
When we withdraw from cell phones, chat rooms, computer screens, and the flow of self-talk, this, too, is a kind of fasting. Instead of limiting our food intake, we limit our stimulus intake. The stimuli of the world are food of a sort; they nourish the ego, grabbing our attention and engaging our hopes, concerns, and fears. When we reduce our stimulus inputs, we achieve a kind of cleansing. Think of walking alone in a quiet forest or on an empty beach at sunrise. The quiet is an essential part of those renewing experiences.
There are many ways of achieving a degree of fasting by reducing our exposure to stimuli. Changing our environment, as in the case of walking in the forest, is one way. Prayer can be another way. Meditation is a path to quieting across many spiritual traditions. When we go to a fine, romantic restaurant and gaze into the eyes of our loved one, the chances are good that the environment is not the same as at a noisy bar. Low lights and quiet help us focus on what is most important to us.
While I am writing this, I am listening to streaming music at a reasonably loud volume. The music is a collected set of songs from various artists, all of which express spiritual themes. Instead of cluttering my mind, the music captures my attention as I write, greatly reducing self-talk and distraction. During that time, all other inputs are eliminated, from conversations to online chats, emails, and phone calls. I've mentioned that most of my writing is relatively automatic. I don't work from an outline and the great majority of the time I have no idea what will come out in any given writing session. In that sense, my writing is like trading. It is a flow that requires an openness of mind and spirit. If I start thinking about how people will like or not like what I write, how many hits I'll get, etc., I immediately shut down. The clutter makes it impossible to find self-expression. When all that self-talk is gone and I'm immersed in beautiful music, I access my voice via writing. As with trading, there is a big difference between writing that comes from the ego and writing that comes from the soul.
When we withdraw from cell phones, chat rooms, computer screens, and the flow of self-talk, this, too, is a kind of fasting. Instead of limiting our food intake, we limit our stimulus intake. The stimuli of the world are food of a sort; they nourish the ego, grabbing our attention and engaging our hopes, concerns, and fears. When we reduce our stimulus inputs, we achieve a kind of cleansing. Think of walking alone in a quiet forest or on an empty beach at sunrise. The quiet is an essential part of those renewing experiences.
There are many ways of achieving a degree of fasting by reducing our exposure to stimuli. Changing our environment, as in the case of walking in the forest, is one way. Prayer can be another way. Meditation is a path to quieting across many spiritual traditions. When we go to a fine, romantic restaurant and gaze into the eyes of our loved one, the chances are good that the environment is not the same as at a noisy bar. Low lights and quiet help us focus on what is most important to us.
While I am writing this, I am listening to streaming music at a reasonably loud volume. The music is a collected set of songs from various artists, all of which express spiritual themes. Instead of cluttering my mind, the music captures my attention as I write, greatly reducing self-talk and distraction. During that time, all other inputs are eliminated, from conversations to online chats, emails, and phone calls. I've mentioned that most of my writing is relatively automatic. I don't work from an outline and the great majority of the time I have no idea what will come out in any given writing session. In that sense, my writing is like trading. It is a flow that requires an openness of mind and spirit. If I start thinking about how people will like or not like what I write, how many hits I'll get, etc., I immediately shut down. The clutter makes it impossible to find self-expression. When all that self-talk is gone and I'm immersed in beautiful music, I access my voice via writing. As with trading, there is a big difference between writing that comes from the ego and writing that comes from the soul.
The right kind of fasting can nourish us, too.
=========================
A very different, but particularly intriguing path to stillness can be achieved through vigorous physical activity. As I described in a recent blog post, we can use the body to reprogram the mind. Each morning, I conduct a workout that includes stretching, weight lifting, and jogging on the treadmill. Those activities are conducted in sequence with little rest time between. Each is designed to test--and ultimately extend--my limits. My experience is that when these routines are conducted well (i.e., when they truly challenge me), I am more energized through the day, but also clearer-headed. The way I know I've conducted a good workout is that I have sustained an elevated heart rate (measured by my Fitbit) and I've broken a good sweat.
If we haven't reached the point of sweating, we haven't challenged our limits. We only grow by testing those limits.
One day it struck me that I could work on the development of my consciousness at the same time as working on physical development. The way I did that was to conduct meditation exercises and guided imagery work while operating within my cardio zone on the treadmill. What this achieved was daily practice in staying "in the zone" while physiologically aroused.
For most of us, physiological arousal creates cognitive and emotional arousal. This is part of the well-known flight-or-fight stress response. When we actively rehearse staying calm and focused during periods of bodily activation, we train ourselves to sustain the flow state even when we are stressed. After daily practice, I became proficient at staying laser focused and in a peaceful, "zen" mode even when my heart rate was elevated 50% and more from its usual levels. Interestingly, this has carried over to trading and other challenging life situations. I feel the stress, but it focuses me; it doesn't lead to impulsive, reactive decisions. In such situations, when we can stay in the zone with a high degree of stillness, the stress is still there, but we become its observer.
Quantified Soul
Thanks to devices such as Fitbit, many of us are familiar with the notion of "quantified self". By tracking such things as heart rate and sleep quantity/quality, we can increase our "self-knowledge through numbers" and make decisions that aid our physical health and overall well-being. A great example that I have written about in several books and blog posts is biofeedback. With a device such as Muse, for example, we can track our brain waves and determine when we are in a meditative state versus a state of normal waking consciousness. This can be very helpful in training ourselves to achieve quicker and more lasting states of internal quiet.
What is interesting with the regular use of many of the quantified self devices is that they yield knock-on effects that lead to profound developmental change.
A good example is a blood sugar monitoring device that I wear in the back of my arm. As a type II diabetic, I must sustain normal blood sugar levels through the use of medications and insulin injections. The problem is that we often can't tell whether our glucose levels are high or low, making it difficult to manage our eating, exercise, etc. With a continuous monitoring device, I can take my reading at any time. Moreover, the sensor unit keeps the readings in its memory and computes a variety of statistics regarding progress over time, trends in readings, etc.
What I found was that the increased self-awareness from the real-time readings helped me make better choices regarding what I ate and how much. In addition, I became able to adjust my insulin amounts to the blood readings at the time. When I knew I would be going out to eat and might indulge more than usual, for example, I could anticipate the impact and proactively increase my insulin. The net result was that my A1C readings, which track blood glucose levels over an extended period, fell dramatically to highly controlled levels.
To my surprise, with the lower sugar levels, I felt fewer swings of high and low readings and experienced more mental clarity and energy through the day. The quantified readings also led me to eat in a more healthy manner, giving up a number of foods that had led me to put on weight. With more energy, I was more productive and my mood improved. That, in turn, stimulated a number of activities outside of my usual work, including classes on spiritual topics and extracurricular readings that found their way into this book.
The bottom line was that feedback from the quantified self unexpectedly fueled a quantified soul.
My development of radical peace found an unexpected inspiration in my use of the Fitbit. Worn as a watch, the Fitbit measures how many steps we take in a day, how many minutes of vigorous exercise we perform, our heart rate, our sleep stages, and more. As with the blood sugar monitoring, I found that tracking my numbers helped me stay on top of my fitness and ensure that I was getting the right amounts--and types--of exercise each day.
The real time numbers also engaged my competitive spirit and led me to make efforts to improve my numbers over time. That, in turn, led to improved energy and well-being, fueling many areas of development apart from fitness. One challenge I undertook was to keep my heart rate down throughout the day. I tackled this by deepening and slowing my breathing at first during exercise and then throughout the day when nudged by the watch.
What I found was that sustained periods of "full breathing"--deep, slow breathing that oxygenates us--produces a sense of fitness and well-being. In that state, I experienced greater stillness of the mind. The enhanced physical state led to a deeper spiritual sense.
How we manage the body affects our access to the soul.
As I experiment with biofeedback devices and quantified self tools, I learn about the activities that lead to a more consistent level of stillness and performance "in the zone." Subtle patterns stand out. For instance, my morning routine (prayer, workouts) is greatly enhanced by the quality of the servant leadership time I spend with our rescue cats: greeting them, petting them, changing their water and kitty litter, feeding them, and holding them. I find greater inner peace after I've connected in a deep, emotional way. That starts the day transcending the ego--and that shows up in trading. When we exercise our capacity to sustain inner peace, we become more peaceful human beings--and more grounded traders.
Peace and Joy as the Alignment of Body and Soul
Notice how mind, body, and soul are aligned in activities such as prayer and meditation. As we quiet our self-talk, we keep our bodies still, avoiding the distraction of physical sensation. Conversely, if we celebrate an important occasion or immerse ourselves in the joy of worship, music and dance engage our hearts and bodies.
At other times, body and soul may not be aligned. We are talking with someone we love, but experience frustration when they don't understand what we're saying. One part of us reaches out to connect to the other person; another part becomes consumed with the frustration. The odds are good this won't be a fulfilling interaction.
Similarly, part of us may focus on the market and patterns that are unfolding, but our bodies become aroused by the potential for risk, reward, missed opportunities, and needs to make money. That lack of alignment makes it difficult to stay immersed in emerging market behavior, increasing the odds that we will act rashly, outside our trading plans.
Sometimes we can create non-alignment to spark change. A depressed person, for example, might follow a therapy approach that requires "behavioral activation": the scheduling of activities such as exercise, social interaction, etc. The activation of the body leads to emotional shifts, which can then feed on themselves. The depressed person who pushes themselves to go out with friends might become engrossed in a conversation and having a good time, dispelling their mood. Psychologists recognize that avoidance of effort can sustain depression. Activation breaks this cycle and creates new, positive energy.
Can we extend behavioral activation to create a kind of soul activation?
Imagine placing our bodies in postures that evoke particular emotions as we visualize and mentally rehearse scenarios associated with those very emotions. For instance, we can adopt a lotus sitting position while emptying our minds and increasing our awareness of our environment. We can raise our hands to the sky and evoke thoughts and feelings of gratitude to our Maker. Engaging in the physical acts that bring us closer to the spiritual creates a kind of activation in itself. When we say grace before a meal, for example, and fold our hands in prayer, our actions cue a shift in our state of mind--and soul.
The psychologist Amy Cuddy has studied how the positioning of our bodies affects our minds through its impact on our body chemistry. How we move impacts how moved we can be; how controlled we move impacts our cognitive discipline. In Yoga, mudras are intricate hand gestures that channel our physical energy. By controlling our bodies through postures and gestures, we can focus our attention, clear our minds, and generate an enhanced level of stillness.
How do we stand? Walk? Sit?
Could it be that how we carry our bodies helps shape our inner experience? Might a joyful body be our most reliable path to inner joy? A peaceful body our path toward stillness of mind?
Prayer, yoga, meditation, exercise: perhaps their greatest impact is their ability to cue mind and soul to enter desired modes. We become what we do. In mastering body and mind, we find our quiet--and our gateway to soul.
Key Takeaways - The ego is not a thing; it's something we do. Our inner chatter reflects our attachments--our wants, needs, fears, cravings, etc.--and those keep us from being fully present in markets, in relationships, in our work, etc. When we quiet the inner chatter, we become more able to absorb the world around us, becoming more sensitive to patterns and nuances. This occurs in conversations, and it occurs in trading. The spiritual disciplines of the world are, in part, ways of making inner stillness part of an ongoing lifestyle. Such stillness is not an emptiness, but rather allows us to process the fullness of our present experience.
Practical Exercise - Suppose you were to spend significant early morning time in a meditative and/or prayerful mode prior to the start of trading. If you were to do this repeatedly, you would find this quiet entering into your trading time, so that you could more readily trade in the flow state. Note how you see things in markets when you are still that you would never pick up on if you are worked up.
NEXT PAGE: CHAPTER TWELVE
Return to Table of Contents
If we haven't reached the point of sweating, we haven't challenged our limits. We only grow by testing those limits.
One day it struck me that I could work on the development of my consciousness at the same time as working on physical development. The way I did that was to conduct meditation exercises and guided imagery work while operating within my cardio zone on the treadmill. What this achieved was daily practice in staying "in the zone" while physiologically aroused.
For most of us, physiological arousal creates cognitive and emotional arousal. This is part of the well-known flight-or-fight stress response. When we actively rehearse staying calm and focused during periods of bodily activation, we train ourselves to sustain the flow state even when we are stressed. After daily practice, I became proficient at staying laser focused and in a peaceful, "zen" mode even when my heart rate was elevated 50% and more from its usual levels. Interestingly, this has carried over to trading and other challenging life situations. I feel the stress, but it focuses me; it doesn't lead to impulsive, reactive decisions. In such situations, when we can stay in the zone with a high degree of stillness, the stress is still there, but we become its observer.
When we are observers to our stress, we no longer experience distress.
Quantified Soul
Thanks to devices such as Fitbit, many of us are familiar with the notion of "quantified self". By tracking such things as heart rate and sleep quantity/quality, we can increase our "self-knowledge through numbers" and make decisions that aid our physical health and overall well-being. A great example that I have written about in several books and blog posts is biofeedback. With a device such as Muse, for example, we can track our brain waves and determine when we are in a meditative state versus a state of normal waking consciousness. This can be very helpful in training ourselves to achieve quicker and more lasting states of internal quiet.
What is interesting with the regular use of many of the quantified self devices is that they yield knock-on effects that lead to profound developmental change.
A good example is a blood sugar monitoring device that I wear in the back of my arm. As a type II diabetic, I must sustain normal blood sugar levels through the use of medications and insulin injections. The problem is that we often can't tell whether our glucose levels are high or low, making it difficult to manage our eating, exercise, etc. With a continuous monitoring device, I can take my reading at any time. Moreover, the sensor unit keeps the readings in its memory and computes a variety of statistics regarding progress over time, trends in readings, etc.
What I found was that the increased self-awareness from the real-time readings helped me make better choices regarding what I ate and how much. In addition, I became able to adjust my insulin amounts to the blood readings at the time. When I knew I would be going out to eat and might indulge more than usual, for example, I could anticipate the impact and proactively increase my insulin. The net result was that my A1C readings, which track blood glucose levels over an extended period, fell dramatically to highly controlled levels.
To my surprise, with the lower sugar levels, I felt fewer swings of high and low readings and experienced more mental clarity and energy through the day. The quantified readings also led me to eat in a more healthy manner, giving up a number of foods that had led me to put on weight. With more energy, I was more productive and my mood improved. That, in turn, stimulated a number of activities outside of my usual work, including classes on spiritual topics and extracurricular readings that found their way into this book.
The bottom line was that feedback from the quantified self unexpectedly fueled a quantified soul.
The real time numbers also engaged my competitive spirit and led me to make efforts to improve my numbers over time. That, in turn, led to improved energy and well-being, fueling many areas of development apart from fitness. One challenge I undertook was to keep my heart rate down throughout the day. I tackled this by deepening and slowing my breathing at first during exercise and then throughout the day when nudged by the watch.
What I found was that sustained periods of "full breathing"--deep, slow breathing that oxygenates us--produces a sense of fitness and well-being. In that state, I experienced greater stillness of the mind. The enhanced physical state led to a deeper spiritual sense.
How we manage the body affects our access to the soul.
=========================
Prayer and Peace
In Islam, prayer is conducted in a kneeling position, with the forehead touching the floor. In Judaism, there is a set of standing prayers conducted with feet together (in the manner of the angels), in which the one praying speaks directly to the Divine. Similarly, in many forms of Christianity, prayer is construed as direct conversation with the Creator, expressing praise, thanksgiving, and contrition and conveying needs and desires. In each case, prayer requires quiet and focus and a putting aside of mundane self-talk. That makes prayer, conducted properly, a form of meditation.
In Islam, prayer is conducted in a kneeling position, with the forehead touching the floor. In Judaism, there is a set of standing prayers conducted with feet together (in the manner of the angels), in which the one praying speaks directly to the Divine. Similarly, in many forms of Christianity, prayer is construed as direct conversation with the Creator, expressing praise, thanksgiving, and contrition and conveying needs and desires. In each case, prayer requires quiet and focus and a putting aside of mundane self-talk. That makes prayer, conducted properly, a form of meditation.
Prayer is particularly powerful because it is a structured exercise for putting aside ego, turning off the internal chatter, broadening awareness, and connecting to larger meanings and priorities. The broadening of awareness is essential to prayer; it is why prayer is often accompanied by choral and instrumental music, community song, and changes in posture (standing, kneeling, etc.).
Several years ago, I met with a group of traders who were setting goals for the new year. They outlined their priorities on a whiteboard and invited me to review them and offer comments. All of the top priorities concerned making improvements in their Christian faith and expressing those changes through their work. It was very clear to me that this was a dedicated community of traders, closely aligned by a set of values and beliefs. Interestingly, none of the traders expressed particular problems with emotional, impulsive trading or loss of discipline. They were so grounded in their faith that daily ups and downs of profits and losses were entirely secondary. Their goal in meeting with me was not to help their negative psychology, but to help them become better Christians--and people--through their trading. It was a most inspiring planning session.
A central part of my morning preparation, accompanying my exercise routine, is a period of prayer and religious study. One of my favorite activities is to pick out a segment of a prayer that speaks to my recent experience and turn that into a subject for contemplation and meditation. That very often leads to a spiritual goal for the day. By the time the work day starts, I am feeling peaceful and grounded--and fulfilled. Trading doesn't involve fighting with impulses and emotions when we are in a soul-full, peace-full mind state, not one tossed and turned by ego concerns.
A central part of my morning preparation, accompanying my exercise routine, is a period of prayer and religious study. One of my favorite activities is to pick out a segment of a prayer that speaks to my recent experience and turn that into a subject for contemplation and meditation. That very often leads to a spiritual goal for the day. By the time the work day starts, I am feeling peaceful and grounded--and fulfilled. Trading doesn't involve fighting with impulses and emotions when we are in a soul-full, peace-full mind state, not one tossed and turned by ego concerns.
========================
As I experiment with biofeedback devices and quantified self tools, I learn about the activities that lead to a more consistent level of stillness and performance "in the zone." Subtle patterns stand out. For instance, my morning routine (prayer, workouts) is greatly enhanced by the quality of the servant leadership time I spend with our rescue cats: greeting them, petting them, changing their water and kitty litter, feeding them, and holding them. I find greater inner peace after I've connected in a deep, emotional way. That starts the day transcending the ego--and that shows up in trading. When we exercise our capacity to sustain inner peace, we become more peaceful human beings--and more grounded traders.
Peace and Joy as the Alignment of Body and Soul
Notice how mind, body, and soul are aligned in activities such as prayer and meditation. As we quiet our self-talk, we keep our bodies still, avoiding the distraction of physical sensation. Conversely, if we celebrate an important occasion or immerse ourselves in the joy of worship, music and dance engage our hearts and bodies.
At other times, body and soul may not be aligned. We are talking with someone we love, but experience frustration when they don't understand what we're saying. One part of us reaches out to connect to the other person; another part becomes consumed with the frustration. The odds are good this won't be a fulfilling interaction.
Similarly, part of us may focus on the market and patterns that are unfolding, but our bodies become aroused by the potential for risk, reward, missed opportunities, and needs to make money. That lack of alignment makes it difficult to stay immersed in emerging market behavior, increasing the odds that we will act rashly, outside our trading plans.
Sometimes we can create non-alignment to spark change. A depressed person, for example, might follow a therapy approach that requires "behavioral activation": the scheduling of activities such as exercise, social interaction, etc. The activation of the body leads to emotional shifts, which can then feed on themselves. The depressed person who pushes themselves to go out with friends might become engrossed in a conversation and having a good time, dispelling their mood. Psychologists recognize that avoidance of effort can sustain depression. Activation breaks this cycle and creates new, positive energy.
Can we extend behavioral activation to create a kind of soul activation?
Imagine placing our bodies in postures that evoke particular emotions as we visualize and mentally rehearse scenarios associated with those very emotions. For instance, we can adopt a lotus sitting position while emptying our minds and increasing our awareness of our environment. We can raise our hands to the sky and evoke thoughts and feelings of gratitude to our Maker. Engaging in the physical acts that bring us closer to the spiritual creates a kind of activation in itself. When we say grace before a meal, for example, and fold our hands in prayer, our actions cue a shift in our state of mind--and soul.
The psychologist Amy Cuddy has studied how the positioning of our bodies affects our minds through its impact on our body chemistry. How we move impacts how moved we can be; how controlled we move impacts our cognitive discipline. In Yoga, mudras are intricate hand gestures that channel our physical energy. By controlling our bodies through postures and gestures, we can focus our attention, clear our minds, and generate an enhanced level of stillness.
How do we stand? Walk? Sit?
Could it be that how we carry our bodies helps shape our inner experience? Might a joyful body be our most reliable path to inner joy? A peaceful body our path toward stillness of mind?
Prayer, yoga, meditation, exercise: perhaps their greatest impact is their ability to cue mind and soul to enter desired modes. We become what we do. In mastering body and mind, we find our quiet--and our gateway to soul.
=========================
Resources
We are seeing an explosion of wearable devices that promise greatly improved mind states and performance. This includes fully portable EEG devices and brain monitoring devices that track patterns of activation in real time. We're also seeing brain training games (see here and here) that have been shown to be helpful in research for sustaining attention, improving visual processing, etc. Such devices may help us enter and stay in "the zone", but also may be helpful for training our minds to more effectively detect patterns in markets.
An unusually practical and insightful book on meditation is The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. Nhat Hanh emphases that meditation is not something you do for a few minutes a day or even an hour. It is an approach to all of one's life activities. The goal is to be mindful, even when engaged in routine tasks such as washing dishes and eating a section of tangerine. The way this is accomplished is by counting one's breaths and thereby becoming aware of breathing. Similarly, one can feel each step on the earth and become aware of one's movement. "Breath is a tool," he points out. "Breath itself is mindfulness" (p. 23). A valuable technique is devoting one day of the week to living mindfully, staying aware during each action of the day. This is a different version of the notion of Sabbath: a way of creating rest and rejuvenation at the end of a work week. Counting breaths while following markets is a great way to stay mindful during trading, bringing peace of mind to the processing of information. Can we really expect to be disciplined and patient if we aren't disciplined and quiet in our bodies and minds?
In his book Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa identifies a key attribute of the warrior: the overcoming of habitual behavior patterns. He points out that the Tibetan word for animal is tudro. Tu means hunched and dro means walking. The animal is hunched over, using its sense of smell to navigate through the world. As human beings, we are upright. We can navigate via many modalities. That ability to flexibly navigate is lost, however, if we become caught up in habitual patterns of thought and behavior. "By stopping habitual patterns," he writes, "we can appreciate the real world on the spot" (p. 124). One way of overcoming habit pattern utilized by G. I. Gurdjieff is the "stop" exercise. At random times of day, the developing person is required to freeze, ceasing all action. In that halted state, it becomes possible to observe one's mind and body and become more mindful and present-centered. I have had traders set their clocks with random alarms during the day to achieve this "stop". At those moments they step back, observe themselves, and reflect on their states of mind and body. The goal is to trade as a true human being, not as a tudro.
In his book Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa identifies a key attribute of the warrior: the overcoming of habitual behavior patterns. He points out that the Tibetan word for animal is tudro. Tu means hunched and dro means walking. The animal is hunched over, using its sense of smell to navigate through the world. As human beings, we are upright. We can navigate via many modalities. That ability to flexibly navigate is lost, however, if we become caught up in habitual patterns of thought and behavior. "By stopping habitual patterns," he writes, "we can appreciate the real world on the spot" (p. 124). One way of overcoming habit pattern utilized by G. I. Gurdjieff is the "stop" exercise. At random times of day, the developing person is required to freeze, ceasing all action. In that halted state, it becomes possible to observe one's mind and body and become more mindful and present-centered. I have had traders set their clocks with random alarms during the day to achieve this "stop". At those moments they step back, observe themselves, and reflect on their states of mind and body. The goal is to trade as a true human being, not as a tudro.
Gurdjieff has an interesting metaphor: each of us is like a horse and cart. We have a driver (the conscious mind) and we have a horse (the reactive, animal self). We can educate the driver all we want, but if the horse is not trained, our cart will go nowhere. The beginning of change is recognizing that "you are not you" (p. 96). We are that horse. Change is impossible if we do not work from the inside on our horse. This perspective is reflected in the Hasidic teachings of the Alter Rebbe, which emphasize that all of us possess animal souls and divine souls. An important function of study, prayer, and good deeds is to harness the animal soul and utilize its energy for divine purposes. Whether in Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, prayer occurs through the day as a way to stay mindful, and also as a way to place the horse in the control of the driver. Prayer quiets and focuses the mind, creating a sense of inner peace.
What would your trading look like if it occurred in a joyful mind? A peaceful mind? What if you tried maximizing your sense of inner quiet during trading rather than your drive for profits? Would you place more trades or fewer? Would you be more or less profitable over time? More or less fulfilled? Note that the cognitive exercises described in The Daily Trading Coach are really techniques for becoming mindful of our thoughts and feelings and bringing them more into our control--a great way to expand our inner peace.
=========================
Practical Exercise - Suppose you were to spend significant early morning time in a meditative and/or prayerful mode prior to the start of trading. If you were to do this repeatedly, you would find this quiet entering into your trading time, so that you could more readily trade in the flow state. Note how you see things in markets when you are still that you would never pick up on if you are worked up.
====
Return to Table of Contents
If you are having difficulties quieting the inner chatter, focus on outside sounds. The same part of the brain that registers internal auditory thinking hears external sounds and can't do both at the same time. One of the most important things I learned from the Psychology of Trading is if you are in an aroused state, lower emotional vibration pattern, the information you take in from the markets is very restricted. To open up another technique I use during trading is extending my arms shoulder height out to the sides, raise both index fingers, and get a sense of my peripheral. This helps re-calibrate my personal hard drive. Add visualizations to the morning routine described in this chapter and you'll even further close the gap between your Beta and Alpha Self.
ReplyDelete