Chapter Six: Renewing the Body

Chapter Five alluded to Abraham Maslow's concept of a motivational hierarchy.  That idea suggests that we cannot address higher levels of motivation unless lower levels are fulfilled.  Someone who is hungry and homeless, for example, cannot easily strive toward career actualization.  Without proper maintenance, even the best car will perform poorly.  Athletes spend hours and days in physical conditioning before they work on their game.  Can we truly expect to consistently cultivate experiences of happiness, fulfillment, energy, spirituality, and connection if we are run down and in poor physical condition?

The body fuels mind and spirit.  Radically renewing our physical selves enables us to experience ourselves--and our world--in new, energized ways.

Let's take a look at how that happens.

Finding Our Second Wind

Most of us have experienced the phenomenon of second wind during good workouts.  Initially, exercise requires effort.  We become short of breath, our muscles become fatigued, and it seems as though we've reached our limits.  Then something interesting happens.  If we keep on going, we experience a surge of energy.  Running suddenly feels effortless; we quickly move through another set of repetitions with the weights.  Up to a point, effort drains us.  Then, if we can break through the initial fatigue, our efforts fuel us.

This happens cognitively as well.  I recently completed a project that took many hours.  I was exhausted, but it was too early to go to bed.  I dragged myself upstairs and figured I would take a power nap.  Margie was watching a news show that described innovative treatments for depression.  I found myself watching the show and becoming fascinated.  By the end of the broadcast, I was fully alert and curious to look up more information on the topic.  Through intellectual curiosity, I had found my second wind.

A friend told me a story of participating in an all-night fund raiser.  The volunteers answered phones and took donations from TV viewers.  By the early morning hours, the volunteers were dragging.  Then the head of the charity brought in several people who had benefited from the work of the group.  Each told their inspiring story of how the donations had made a meaningful difference in their life.  By the time the last person spoke and the group loudly applauded, the volunteers were fully awake and energized for the rest of the night.  Spiritually, they had found a second wind.

Every productive, successful person I have encountered has cultivated the capacity to endure to the point of second wind--and beyond.  Where others become uncomfortable and quit, creative geniuses, entrepreneurs, and star athletes persist and find the stores of energy that move them forward.  In a very important sense, every act that brings a second wind becomes an act of radical renewal.  Through that second wind, we truly find our selves re-newed.

Conversely, every activity in which we shut down upon the first signs of fatigue or discomfort reinforces the habit of not making transformational efforts.  The capacity to sustain effort--our will, our intentionality--is determined by the degree to which we push the boundaries of comfort.  With free will, as with so many human capacities, we use it or lose it.  There is no simple stasis:  we either expand our intentionality or we lose our capacity to guide and sustain effort.

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Effort Is The Price We Pay For Free Will

The important implication is that free will is not something we either have or don't have.  All of us have a measure of free will--the capacity for choice--and all of us possess limits on our abilities to sustain intent.  We can think of directed efforts as a gymnasium of the will.  It doesn't matter whether we're making efforts at work, in our family lives, or in sport.  Setting a challenging course and sustaining its pursuit exercises our willpower: the power of our will.  From this perspective, we can appreciate that our lifestyles impact the development of our will.  As in physical development, regular and challenging activity builds our capacities.

Where we see this principle in reverse is during many retirements.  People stop working, they no longer raise families, and suddenly there is less to do.  They lose physical conditioning and they lose the mental edge that came from productively living a busy life.  Over time, they lose the capacity to sustain even basic efforts.  In a number of instances I've observed, the indulgences of the retired life lead to a failure to exercise basic moral capacities, such as caring about others.  Any human capacity, not exercised, atrophies.

Margie and I have five children and six grandchildren, all living outside our home.  I am convinced that we would not be as caring and sensitive toward our family members had we not adopted our rescue cats.  The special needs of those animals push us to make unusual efforts and, at times, prioritize their needs over our own.  Those efforts keep us sharp in our relationship skills and sensitivities--something I have to remind myself when our youngest cat decides he's hungry at 2:30 AM!

What capacities are exercised by your trading?  What capacities lie dormant?  How physically active are you during trading days?  How successful are you at renewing your energy and sustaining your focus through the day?  What important capacities are not exercised by trading and need time and effort outside of market hours?
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So how is this relevant to renewal of the body?

It turns out that exercise is one of the most tangible ways in which we can access second wind.  We experience bursts of energy when we push ourselves in the weight room; we can find new breath when we sustain a challenging running pace.  Initial stretching exercises may be difficult to get through, as we work out the stiffness of our muscles.  Past that discomfort point, however, we enter a zone in which we become far more physically flexible than we thought we could be.  Stretching becomes energizing, not tiring.

Regular and varied physical exercise is not just a great way of becoming physically fit and improving our health.  It is also a powerful platform for training the will.  Each work out becomes an opportunity to tap into second wind.  That can energize mind and spirit for the rest of the day.

Recall in Chapter Five how we found that alternating activities allows us to tap into sets of strengths while resting other ones.  The same principle of alternation applies to physical exercise.  We can rest ourselves aerobically while working on our flexibility.  We can rest muscles from weight lifting while we do laps in a swimming pool.  By performing many different forms of exercise--and using each one to tap into second wind--we can energize every day without depleting ourselves in any areas.  Effort becomes continuous, channeled in ways that keep us fresh.

Exercising the Brain

Some of my most dramatic experiences of second wind have occurred, not in physical exercise, but in meditation and self-hypnosis.  During those activities, we are physically inert, but actively exercise our capacities for focus, self-control, and concentration.  It is the brain's prefrontal cortex that gets a workout when we sustain efforts to stay "in the zone".

The beauty of biofeedback is that we receive objective data telling us whether or not we are operating in our zone.  With heart rate variability (HRV) or brainwave (EEG) feedback, for example, we receive continuous readings of our ability to sustain calm concentration.  By engaging in deep, slow breathing and visualizing something peaceful, we can learn to bring ourselves to an enhanced state of focus:  the opposite of an aroused, flight-or-fight state of stress.  Inevitably, however, we find ourselves taxed by the effort of sustaining the meditative state.  Random thoughts begin to come to us; we become antsy and want to move around; we become bored.  Sure enough, as we hit that fatigue point--the limits of our focus--our biofeedback readings dip.

That is when many people stop the biofeedback work.  From the vantage point of second wind, however, that is precisely where we want to double down on refocusing and bringing ourselves back into the zone.  If we can get past the initial distractions, we soon enter a much deeper zone.  In this new state, it takes surprisingly little effort to stay calm and focused.  We don't just enter the zone; we become immersed in it.

This is the flow state described by Csikszentmihalyi in his research on creativity.  When we are fully absorbed in what we are doing, we tap into fresh avenues of experience and new ways of thinking.  At times I become so engrossed in writing that the ideas literally flow.  I type them out as if they are being dictated to me.  At other times, when I am not focused and internally quiet, I can find writing difficult, experiencing that all-too-familiar writer's block.  Aryeh Kaplan, in his remarkable book on Jewish meditation, talks about our capacity to become "locked on" during problem solving and creative activity.  At those periods of hyperfocus, we literally see solutions and possibilities that never come to us in our normal, habitual state of consciousness.  This has powerful implications for trading.

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Prayer and Meditation

In many of the world's spiritual traditions, prayer, conducted properly, is a form of meditation.  More specifically, prayer is meditative effort that we direct to a Higher Power.  Recall in the first chapter how we found that personal change is only possible when we access fresh states of consciousness.  Prayer and meditation are important spiritual tools in giving us greater access to fresh conscious states.

Think about the prayers that we see in most prayer books.  Most are either prayers of praise (connecting us to the awesomeness of the Divine); prayers of thanksgiving (connecting us to gratitude); or prayers of petition (connecting us to our needs, including our need to make changes).  Viewed in this light, prayer can be seen as a powerful tool of renewal, radically taking us to enhanced cognitive and emotional states associated with awe, gratitude, and desire.  Indeed, if we think about the extended prayer embodied in many religious services, we can appreciate that this, too, serves as a form of exercise.  Through prayer and meditation, we exercise the spirit and cultivate our selves as spiritual beings.

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The existential philosopher Colin Wilson, echoing a theme from G. I. Gurdjieff, points out that our normal state of consciousness is suboptimal.  That state is conditioned by habit, which enables us to act automatically and efficiently.  The problem occurs when we need to access intentionality and sustain high levels of effort.  For minds accustomed to auto-pilot, the effort becomes too effortful.  We stay in our comfort zones, which means we don't push our boundaries and find our second wind.  Firing on only a couple of our cylinders, we never find our flow state. 

Brain exercise, in all its forms--biofeedback, yoga, meditation, self-hypnosis--is a gateway to achieving fresh cognitive and emotional states.  In those new states, we don't just improve our usual ways of thinking.  Rather, we become capable of unique ways of processing information and enhanced levels of creativity and insight.  As we shall see, this can make us better traders.

Renewing The Body, Enhancing Our Trading

Let's return to our basic thesis:  Two things get in the way of effective trading: routine and ego.

Routine locks us in habit and habitual states of consciousness.  That keeps us seeing the same things the same way--and making the same mistakes.  It is only when we achieve that second wind that we find new energy, fueling fresh perception and new action patterns.  There is no renewal of our trading if we are not energized.

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Resources

A very important psychological principle is that our energy level determines our access to our strengths.  If we are not cognitively energized (intellectually stimulated); physically energized (physically fit; eating well); and spiritually energized (inspired, fulfilled), we cannot draw upon the best of who we are--in trading and in life.  This blog post explains why our energy level should be our highest priority.  See also this post, which explains the reverse phenomenon:  how playing to our strengths gives us energy.  When we put these ideas together, we can see a positive spiral at work, where energy connects us with our strengths and the exercise of our strengths further energizes us.  A great test of your trading process is the degree to which it taps into this spiral, energizing you rather than depleting you.

One area that I am currently exploring is training the brain for trading success.  A number of games are available that assess and exercise specific cognitive functions, such as concentration, visual processing, memory, and speed of processing.  See, for example, the BrainHQ and Neurotracker platforms, as well as real-time brain measures from Platypus Neuro.  This is an exciting frontier for trader development.  It may well be the case that we can train brain functions that help keep us spiritually connected, melding ancient practices (meditation, prayer) to modern neuroscience. 

Research suggests an intimate connection between physical fitness and psychological well-being.  Low levels of activity keep us de-energized, and that shows up in our mood and productivity.  A surprising degree of the loss of energy, focus, and wellness in old age can be traced to inactivity and the impacts of deconditioning.  I have found the Fitbit to be particularly helpful in tracking activity, aerobic exercise, and even sleep quality/quantity.  My observation is that my focus in trading--and ability to pounce on solid opportunity--is directly related to my energy state early in the day.  Many traders complain that they don't get large enough in their top trades.  It's difficult to do that without enthusiasm and focus, and those are difficult in a rundown condition.  How many days do you operate with peak energy, enthusiasm, and focus?

If our energy connects us to our strengths, one of the greatest dangers we face as traders, sitting behind screens, is living a sedentary life.  Psychologist Emilia Lahti describes the Finnish concept of sisu, which is our ability to draw upon latent resources and sustain that second wind of consciousness.  When psychologist Dean Keith Simonton studied creative geniuses, he found that they are more productive than their colleagues.  Their sheer productivity raises the odds that they will generate a lasting achievement.  It is the ability to tap into that second wind of sisu that enables them to sustain such productivity.  In a word, they have turned the ability to sustain energy-creating effort into a lifestyle by staying grounded in what they find most meaningful--and in what they do best.      

Might our ability to generate sound trading ideas depend upon our energy level?  Research finds that exercise improves creativity due to its impacts upon the brain.  With greater energy, we are more likely to look at more variables in different ways.  The trader lacking energy stares at screens but does not actively process the information.  Our states of mind and body determine the level at which we process market-related information.  A tired mind and body processes markets superficially.  

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Ego is a different problem, but equally problematic.  When we become locked onto outcomes, we lose sight of process.  When we're focused on being right, counting our profits and pushing for more, that self-focused attention takes us away from understanding the markets we're trading.  We can't be absorbed in markets if we're self-absorbed.  When we shift our physical state through meditation, prayer, and exercise, we break that self-focus.  

There is an important but unappreciated link between routine and ego:  addiction.

Before we develop that idea, however, let's step back for a moment and examine an important perspective:  Every psychological ailment is also a part of normal life.  Most of us do not have diagnosable anxiety disorders or depression and yet, in our trading, most of us have experienced performance anxiety and bouts of negativity and hopelessness.  We may not have uncontrolled episodes of rage, but we know what frustration feels like.  Similarly, we may not experience the addiction of someone dependent on heroin or cocaine, but still we can find ourselves attached to things in unhealthy ways.

Buddhist perspectives teach us that attachment is the source of all suffering in life.  What we crave controls us and ultimately creates our suffering.  Of course as traders we want to be profitable.  Suffering comes, however, when we crave profits; when we need them.  Most traders, myself included, have experienced the difference between rational, planned trading and addictive trading.  We cannot control markets and we cannot predict markets with anything approaching certainty.  This ensures that losses will be part of our trading experience.  To the degree that we become attached to profits and the need to succeed, losses bring suffering.  If our trading routines are attached to our profit needs, keeping us tethered to screens, then our experience cannot bring learning and progress.  It can only bring suffering.

When trading processes are ego-driven, they bring us misery.  Too often, much too often, what passes for a passion for trading is an addictive attachment.  With that unhealthy attachment, we neglect our most basic physical and relationship needs--no different than if we were deeply addicted to heroin.  For the addicted trader, market participation is destructive, not enhancing:  part of a deep, personal failure.

There can be no radical renewal--of our lives or our trading--if we cannot renew our bodies.  How we sleep, how we eat, how we access our spirit--our soul--impact our energy and ultimately our performance.  Yes, work-life balance is important, but what we're talking about is more than balancing the current components of our lives.  It's achieving and sustaining new, higher levels of focus, energy, and quiet through lifestyles that push our boundaries and extend our second wind.  That radically renews us--and our trading.

Why True Passion Matters

We commonly hear advice to pursue our passion.  What lies behind that advice?  And what is the difference between genuine passion and addictive over-involvement?

First off, let's examine why we feel passionate about certain activities and not others.  As I shared earlier, I am absolutely passionate about the rescue cats Margie and I have adopted.  Not a single day passes at home that I don't think of them with love and reach out to them, play with them, talk with them, etc.  As a result, I've developed the animal lover's ability to understand the nuances of each pet's body postures, sounds, and actions.  There is nothing mystical about being an "animal whisperer".  It just takes long periods of sustained immersion, observation, and interaction.

If I did not have an interest in cats, I could never achieve the immersion necessary to be a whisperer.  A cat could shout at me and, if I wasn't a cat person, I wouldn't make heads or tails of the message.  I have little aptitude for mechanical tasks (indeed, I scored well below 100 on the performance section of my IQ test in grade school) and find building things, fixing things, etc. to be frustrating.  I never get to that point of immersion when engaging in performance tasks, so I never cultivate the master mechanic's ability to diagnose a problem simply from how something looks or sounds.

Passion comes from the exercise of our strengths.  Passion fuels the sustained efforts that get us to our second wind.  Many times we fail to "get to that next level" in life because we are not tapping into what we are truly good at, what most speaks to us.  As a result, we complete our work and fulfill our basic daily and weekly tasks, but never truly become locked on.  Our passions give us energy, and that keeps the body fresh, even after long hours of effort.

Working on the body expands our capacity for passion.

When we use physical exercise, fasting, meditation, yoga, and other disciplines to reach our second wind and extend our willpower, we grow our ability to stay immersed in what we do best.  Passion is a function of second wind.

As we've seen, it is common for traders to loudly proclaim their passion for trading when, in fact, they are highly ego-involved in making and losing money.  Successful traders are passionate about understanding markets; their real passion is connected to their intellectual curiosity.  This is why I have consistently found that successful traders are more characterized by their cognitive strengths than their personality traits.  The great traders love the process of generating and applying ideas, and that fuels extraordinary efforts and eventual profits.  But only if their lifestyles expand their access to energy and their capacity for second wind.

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Why We Study Our Best Trading

One of the most important themes of my writings is the importance of reviewing our best trades, not just our trading mistakes.  When we study our best trading, we can identify what we did well.  Over time, those reviews reveal our strengths.  That is particularly the case when we reverse engineer the processes that created our best trades:  the ways in which we generated ideas; the ways in which we managed the risk; the ways in which we managed ourselves.

What I found from the review of my own trading was that I was at my absolute worst when I came into the market with preconceived views and "forced" trades.  I was at my best when I sat back and let the unfolding market action speak to me.  As I mentioned earlier, this drew upon my strengths as a psychologist:  my ability to listen attentively and process what I hear.

But there was a more subtle finding as well.  During my best trading, I experienced peace of mind.  I had done my research; I felt prepared; and now it was just a matter of waiting for the market to make sense to me.  I was at peace because I knew that sense-making was going to occur.  

What this told me was that operating in the zone--the flow state--is fundamentally a spiritual state.  There was absolutely no ego, no high-fiving, no fear and worry when I was in my receptive mode.  If a trade didn't work out, it generally provided information for a new view.  If it did work out, there was a sense of fulfillment--spiritual fulfillment.  It is possible to enjoy success in markets without being attached to each trade's results.

Your best trading is a powerful reflection of you at your best.  When you study your successful trades, you learn what makes you successful--and that's the first step in developing processes that keep you in your zone.

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The exercise of our strengths is intrinsically rewarding, just as encounters with our weaknesses are frustrating.  That intrinsic reward is experienced as a quiet, deep fulfillment.  We are on the right path; we are doing what we love in the way we love.  We can be fully immersed in what we're doing when we're fully immersed in who we are.  That immersion is no different from the state we achieve in biofeedback sessions or meditation.  It provides us with access to new ways of processing information, and it opens the door to fresh connections and ideas.  If we are not in a flow state, we are not actively exercising our strengths--and that means we are not fully energized, not fully at our best.

In short, pursuing our passions energizes the body and that renews the mind.  Doing what we do best brings out the best in us.

In this chapter we've seen that the principles behind renewing the body are no different than the principles underlying our personal renewal.  In our habitual states, we think habitual thoughts and experience the world in habitual ways.  It is when we make and sustain significant efforts that we find the second wind that lifts us beyond the routine.  Exercising the body through vigorous exercise; exercising our emotions by cultivating meaningful, new experiences; exercising the brain through the pursuit of sustained focus; energizing our selves by exercising our strengths--all of these are ways of training ourselves to transcend, turning radical renewal into an ongoing lifestyle.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS - Our energy level determines our level of functioning.  When we are run down, we are much less likely to achieve breakout insights and peak experiences.  The run down person rarely transcends routine.  When we exercise the body or mind and push to the point of second wind, we gain access to fresh energy, raising our overall levels of productivity, creativity, and insight.  An important measure of our renewal is the consistency with which we achieve the flow state and generate peak experiences.  In cultivating our second wind, we grow our ability to continually renew ourselves and our efforts.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE - In the previous chapter, we looked at an exercise involving our calendars and the structuring of our time.  This chapter suggests that it's not enough to schedule the right activities.  We also need to pursue those activities the right way.  That means that we set challenging goals that will push us beyond our comfort zones and allow us to access our second wind.  A great exercise is to structure each activity in the calendar to expand our intentionality and then rate each day in terms of productivity and mindset.  What we find is that how we treat the body and organize our efforts ultimately determines our access to soul.

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NEXT PAGE:  CHAPTER SEVEN

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