Chapter Ten: The Path of Radical Joy

Earlier, we explored an important idea.  Most of us experience a relatively limited range of emotion and cognition.  This keeps us trapped in the narrow set of behaviors we call routines.  Within routine consciousness, we can be happy or sad; calm or nervous; content or frustrated; connected or isolated.  People who need psychological or psychiatric help are often at a negative extreme of these dimensions.  They are not just sad, but depressed; not just nervous but anxious; not just frustrated but angry; not just lonely but unable to connect to others.  Traditional psychology and psychiatry offers a range of evidence-based tools for becoming less depressed, anxious, angry, and walled-off.  Thanks to recent developments in what is known as positive psychology, there are tools and techniques to help us enhance our happiness, calm, contentment, and connectedness. 

But what lies at the far positive end of these dimensions?  Just as depression lies at the extreme of sadness and loss, there are states that occupy the realms beyond happiness, calm, contentment, and connection.  This is the frontier that we will be exploring in the remaining chapters.

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Broadening The Range of Emotional Experience

The above point is particularly important and not well elaborated, even in the writings on positive psychology.  The opposite of depression is not happiness.  The opposite of happiness is unhappiness.  Happiness is a normal positive emotion; unhappiness is a normal negative emotion.  Depression is an abnormal negative emotion; abnormal in the sense that it is beyond our usual daily experience.  From that perspective the opposite of depression is the positive emotion that is beyond normal daily experience, and that would be joy.  Similarly, the opposite of stress is calm.  The opposite of anxiety is peace or serenity.  

This is not a mere matter of semantics.  When we live lives caught in routine, we remain stuck between the poles of normal negative and positive emotions.  We don't necessarily experience high degrees of depression or anxiety, but nor do we reach points of joy or peace.  

One purpose of psychiatric medications and psychotherapies is to reduce the abnormal, negative side of human experience (e.g., depression, anxiety).  One function of spirituality is to expand the positive range of experience (joy, peace).  When we are immersed in radical joy, quiet, etc., we process information in wholly unique ways (just as we process information in qualitatively different ways under conditions of depression and anxiety).  Literally, what we perceive in ourselves, others, and markets is a function of the states we're in.  Spirituality thus expands our action alternatives.  We cannot act upon what we do not perceive.

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To recapitulate, just as traditional therapies can help us progress within the normal range of emotional, social, and behavioral development, spirituality enables us to extend our development: expanding our repertoires, enhancing our experience, and ultimately renewing our lives.  In these enhanced states, we process information in a radically enhanced way, perceiving the world more deeply and broadly.  That enriches all facets of life, including our trading.  It accomplishes this by taking us beyond normal positive emotional experience.

So let us start with what lies beyond happiness:  joy.

What Is Joy?

Happiness is having fun.  Happiness is enjoyment.  I recently went out to brunch with my wife where we were seated next to a couple and their very young child.  The little one kept peeking over at us and smiling.  Margie and I couldn't help but smile back.  What we felt was happiness; what the baby felt was pure, unalloyed joy.

For most of us, there aren't many occasions when we are filled with the sense of delight.  The baby was being held, the baby was being fed, the baby was connected with people who loved her, the baby was fascinated by the world around her.  Life at that moment was wonderful.  That is joy.

Recall the "peak experiences" described by Abraham Maslow and studied by psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman.  Maslow believed that the wonder-full moments that stand out in our lives are the result of a qualitatively different and enhanced state of consciousness.  Time slows down.  We experience a deep sense of joy and meaning.  Self-consciousness fades and we feel connected to others and to broader life perspectives. 

Many of our memories are relatively vague.  Peak experiences typically stand out in bold relief, retaining their exquisite detail.  When I returned to blog writing after working at a hedge fund for a number of years, my first post was about a kitten we had adopted, Mia Bella.  Mia was scheduled to be put down at a high kill shelter in rural Kentucky.  She was a cute grey kitten, but had a significant eye infection and needed medical attention.  No one wanted to adopt a cat that potentially required hundreds of dollars in vet bills, so Mia found no home.  Only at the last minute did a rescue organization in suburban New York send a truck to transport the cats on death row to their shelter.  Mia was among them.

When the rescue staff unloaded the crates, we saw dozens of frightened cats in cages.  One, however, was different.  The gray kitten kept pawing at her cage door trying to get out.  I opened the door and out she sprang, leaping onto my shoulder and purring in the loudest way I had ever heard.  Time went by and she would not leave my shoulder.  Finally I placed her back in the cage so that I could pay attention to the other cats.  No way.  The little gray one pawed even more insistently on the cage door until I reopened it, whereupon she again leaped onto my shoulder.  The bond we formed was intense.  It felt as though we were meant to connect.  To this day, every night, Mia sleeps by my leg and purrs on my shoulder when I pick her up.  With that purr, I am transported to that time when I opened her cage door and held her to my shoulder.

What I feel petting another person's cat is happiness.  What I feel holding Mia is joy.  There was something intensely life-affirming in providing a home for a creature so close to death.  Those memories and that sense continue to this day, with all their vividness.  When we feel happy, we feel good.  When we are suffused with joy, the world feels good.

Many years ago, during my sophomore year of college, I took a vacation with my family at a beach resort in Florida.  I brought a book for the trip:  The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.  The novel describes an architect who fights for his artistic vision.  The lead character, Howard Roark, was one of the first truly realistic, heroic characters I had encountered.  As I sat on the beach reading--the experience is etched in my mind to this day--I looked over the water and experienced a moment of serenity, bliss, and pure clarity.  I thought to myself, "This is what psychology is supposed to be.  Not just treating mental illness, but helping people find their heroic dimensions."  It was an insight that has remained fresh more than 40 years later, guiding much of my subsequent life and career development.

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Joy and the Flow State

Happiness grounds us in the concrete here and now.  When I receive an unexpected gift or win a prize in a contest, I feel happiness.  A good meal, positive feedback from a valued colleague, spending time with friends--all of those bring a sense of enjoyment.  They make us happy.

Unlike happiness, joy takes us beyond what is here and now.  What I felt when I first viewed the Grand Canyon or the vast fjords and icebergs of Alaska was different from the happy feeling of having something go well.  The view brought a sense of awe and specialness--a broader connection to the world.  

To return to the earlier example, I can feel happy playing with someone else's pet or holding someone else's baby.  I love animals and little kids.  But when I play with one of the cats we've rescued or hold my own little child, the feeling is quite different.  I'm grounded in the present, but it's an expanded present.  I become part of something larger, something meaningful.

It is this expanded present that is central to the flow state described by Csikszentmihalyi.  When we are in the zone, experiencing flow, we're not just enjoying what we're doing; we're absorbed in the joy of doing.  This is a very important distinction, especially for traders.  Making money can make us happy; we can have fun with markets.  That doesn't mean that we are operating in the flow state of joy.  Indeed, when I watch traders and speak with them, I am often struck by the relative absence of joy.  Their trading offers moments of enjoyment, but not necessarily transcendent joy.

A key identification made by Csikszentmihalyi is that the flow state is central to creativity.  It is when we are fully immersed in what we're doing that we perceive new and different relationships and gain access to fresh perspectives.  The artist who experiences joy and bliss in a nature scene will capture that scene in ways not possible for the person who just views the surroundings as another part of the outdoors.  In the trading world, a lack of creativity keeps us stuck in consensus.  We cannot achieve unique returns if we view the world conventionally.  If we're stuck in our normal, everyday states of consciousness, how can we possibly escape convention?

As we shall see, one path to success in trading is the path of joy:  to find something in the trading process so meaningful, so special, that it takes us beyond happiness.  Often, that special aspect of trading is the joy of re-searching and discovery:  the thrill of intellectual curiosity that is piqued and fulfilled.  Profits and losses themselves do not bring joy--they don't transform.  A central challenge of trading is finding something in the trading process that so speaks to your strengths, interests, and values that it takes you outside yourself to a place of specialness.  Think of the moments when you are holding your new baby and reveling in experiencing this unique being who is also a part of you.  What you feel is wonder and awe; that sense of the special.  That is the sense that can take us beyond the conventional in our trading.

That is what religious people feel in the presence of the Sacred.

That is what people in love feel in each other's presence.

That is what great traders experience with markets.

They don't merely experience markets as interesting or challenging.  They find in markets something awe-some.  That fills them with joy, and joy transports them to a different mode of information processing.

It bears repeating:  What we can see in markets is a function of the state we're in.  

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Barbara Frederickson has conducted research that shows how positive emotional experience broadens our perception and helps us build new capacities.  Joy is the ultimate broadening experience, connecting us in fresh ways to the world.  I am a deeper person because of my connection to the children and cats I have adopted.  I am a more fulfilled person because of the meaning of my work as a psychologist and my first-hand experience of what people can become.  Joy takes ordinary experience and transforms it into extraordinary, peak experience.

Quite literally, joy has the potential to reorganize life.  When we pursue the path of joy, experience becomes radically renewing.  The trading challenge isn't simply that we become caught in emotional states.  The problem is that we cannot consistently access the state of flow when we trade.  Focused on outcomes, we cannot immerse themselves in the process and joy of the doing.

Joy as Positive Trauma

What is the most rapid form of life change?  It's not any kind of brief therapy.

It is trauma.

Let's think about that.  The person who is traumatized, perhaps through being tortured in war or violently assaulted on the street, loses his or her sense of safety.  Every assumption about life and the future is violated.  At the moment of trauma, the end of life may feel imminent.  Fear and uncertainty, normal human emotions, are magnified many-fold.  Experience becomes wholly abnormal:  terror, disorientation, powerlessness.  The sheer intensity of this emotional experience bypasses normal conscious scrutiny and filtering.  We assimilate those experiences whole, without any opportunity to digest and make sense of them.

Because of this abnormal assimilation, the aftermath of trauma frequently includes flashbacks.  Normal experiences of fear can trigger the traumatic memories of terror.  Normal uncertainty can bring a sense of utter powerlessness.  Sights and sounds and sensations associated with the traumatic incident bring the entire episode to life.  We can feel fine one moment and fall apart the next simply because a sight, sound, feeling, or thought triggers our traumatic memories.

Years ago, after the car I was riding in was hit by a car going through an intersection, we flipped over and landed on the hood of the car.  That sent my head through the rear windshield.  To this day, I vividly recall looking up and seeing blood pouring from my head.  For a while afterward, I found it impossible to even sit in a car without shaking violently--even one not moving!  That is trauma.

What is amazing about trauma is that it can completely reorganize and change personality in a single life event.  An outgoing woman who is raped now has difficulty going outdoors and being around people.  An emotionally stable young man returns from war with wild emotional swings and intractable substance abuse.  Normal change processes--in therapy or through life experience--are mediated through emotional experience.  When my child fails a test and experiences warmth and love from me, what is internalized is a sense of unconditional worth.  That is normal change, occurring through repeated experience.  Trauma creates abrupt change beyond the normal.  It does not bring a shift of existing personality, but a disruption and qualitative alteration of personality.

Experiences of profound joy--and more broadly the peak experiences described by Maslow--are the positive equivalents of trauma. 

This is a very important concept. 

Whereas traumas result from extreme experiences of fear and uncertainty, peak experiences are mediated by extreme experiences of joy and meaning.  This suggests that peak experiences also bypass normal conscious scrutiny and are processed whole.  In the case of peak experiences, however, "flashbacks" occur as surges of joy and significance.  These are inherently pleasurable and fulfilling and thus serve as fresh motivators for new life activities, fundamentally expanding, renewing, and energizing the self.

It was precisely such an episode that led me to research spirituality and write this book.  My wife and I took our first trip to Israel, which I expected to be quite interesting.  We are both Jewish, but were interested in the range of faiths and the depth of history of the region.  The trip was not disappointing in that regard.  It was special standing on the hilltop at Masada reliving the Roman siege, walking the path of Christ, experiencing the four quarters (Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) of old city Jerusalem, and witnessing the layers of history excavated within those areas.  

At the close of the trip, we toured the holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem.  The displays were detailed and vivid, bringing the horror of that period to life.  One section displayed a large map in which the number of Jews killed were written onto each country.  The sheer numbers--and the breadth of the extermination--were mind-boggling.  Looking at the maps, I had what I can only describe as an out-of-body experience.  A powerful sense came across me as it hit me, "These are my people."  Quietly I began to cry...and cry.  But I was joyous at the same time.  I felt as though I had connected to something very important.

Upon returning to the States, I poured myself into Jewish writings, history, and worship.  That led me to explore a wide range of spiritual traditions and how they impact people's lives.  With the insights I gained, I began incorporating these spiritual practices into my daily life.  I gradually introduced methods and perspectives from these traditions into my work as a psychologist and beyond.  I felt renewed, my work felt renewed.  There isn't a doubt in my mind that, for me, this was a fundamental shift of life direction.

All because of one peak episode in a museum, blending profound joy and meaning.

What I experienced is surprisingly common, though most people rarely speak of such intensely personal experiences in casual company.  Research reported by David Bryce Yaden finds that fully one-third of people across various cultures acknowledge experiences of peak self-transcendence.  One of the defining features of these experiences, he describes, is a loss of the boundaries defining the self and a sense of "unity" with a larger reality.  In my case, the experience was feeling at one with my people during a moment of profound empathy.  For others, self-transcendence can occur at times of prayer or during an immersion in nature.  Yaden notes that an essential element in these episodes is a reduction in self-centeredness.  Peak experiences are not about building or bolstering the ego, but rather about transcending our usual experience.  During periods of extreme joy and meaning, we move beyond the common concerns of daily life and operate with a wholly new, energizing perspective.

That is positive trauma.

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Finding Joy in Trading

Let's start with an experience that happened just as I was writing this part of the book.  I wanted to get some writing done, but felt tired and distracted.  I turned to music to grab me and, after listening to some favorite tunes I hadn't heard in a while and getting some good writing done, I stumbled across one of my old favorites.  The heroic theme of the video grabbed me and I played it a few times.  By that time, my imagination was fully engaged and I found my second wind, ultimately getting some of my best writing done.

So what happened?

In one state of mind, I could lack energy and focus.  With the immersion in the music, I entered a wholly different state of mind, fascinated by what surrounded me.  I became absorbed in it; it felt different, special.  There was no thought about the writing, about markets, about daily life.  The immersion in the music was transforming.

That is what happens in the best of trading.

My trading is grounded in an identification of two components of market behavior:  trend and cycle.  Specifically, I look to identify dominant cycles in recent market action and use that cycle information to participate in the market's trend.  The problem is that stable cycles come and go in markets.  They have a characteristic structure that can be identified, but it's a structure that occurs at very different time frames.  It is that "fractal" nature of market behavior that gives it its complexity--and challenge.

When I perceive the emergence of a cyclical structure, it is precisely like becoming absorbed in the music.  I'm filled with the wonder of it, the beauty of it--no different than if I were standing in front of a great artwork or natural phenomenon.  That joy is what keeps me engaged in markets, whether I trade or not.  It is a glimpse of complex Order in the world and very much feels like a glimpse of the Divine.  This sense of joy and discovery keeps me researching new measures of breadth and strength and finding fresh sources of trading edge. 

When I experienced my peak moment in the Jerusalem museum, I felt connected to something Divine:  something larger than myself.  It is no different when I can apprehend the interplay of cycles and trends and gain an understanding of what is happening in a market.  At those moments, the trade flows easily from the understanding.  There is no self-doubt, no fight with internal dialogue.  In a real sense, there is no me at all in the trade.  

We often hear advice to trade with a positive mindset.  That's only part of the answer.  We succeed when we find joy in what we are doing.  This is why trading psychology matters.

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Clearly there are varying degrees of self-transcendence, from feeling at one with a romantic partner to experiencing a deep connection with the universe.  As with traumas, these experiences retain their vividness over time:  it doesn't take much to transport me back to the unpacking of the cats' crates or the maps in the museum.  Such experiences define us in important ways precisely because they broaden who we are.  There is a saying that a mind, once stretched, cannot return to its original dimensions.  The same is true of the soul.

Finding Self-Transcendence

One of the fascinating things about joy is that we cannot simply manufacture it.  We can play music or comedy videos or reach out to friends and feel happy.  Peak experiences of joy and meaning, however, come to us--and typically at unexpected times.

That doesn't mean that we cannot build our capacity for transcendence.  Notice how peak experiences such as those I've described do not typically occur when we are immersed in daily routines.  It is when we are outside our normal environment, engaged in significant activity, that we are most likely to find joy and a deep sense of meaning.  Many of those experiences occur when we are alone or when we are solely in the company of someone we love.  Often, it is when we are engaged in something we deeply value that we experience a radical joy and profound sense of purpose.

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What Are Your Trading Peak Experiences?

Trading is something I enjoy and find challenging.  I have experienced highs and lows in my own trading and, as mentioned above, I find the search for market patterns to be fulfilling in their own right.  Can I actually say that I've experienced peak experiences in my trading the way I've experienced sheer joy as a parent or as a psychologist?  I don't think so.  And that might be the reason why I have never sustained the pursuit of trading as a career.  My path of joy--my path to flow states--involves being a meaningful part of the lives of others, whether it's as a writer, a therapist, a parent, a spouse, or as an adopter of rescue cats.  

Many developing traders ask questions about how they can better make money in markets, but perhaps that is the wrong question.  A better question is whether trading provides their best path to joy and meaning.  Does following and trading markets expand your self, or does it narrow what you do and who you are?  Yes, trading might make you happy.  But does it make you joyous?  Does it create that positive trauma that fuels your forward development?

The issue isn't whether we live a successful or unsuccessful life.  It's whether we live a life that is full or empty.  The problem with lives lived for pleasure and ego needs alone is that, ultimately--at the soul level--they are empty.  They make us happy for a time, but they are not full-fill-ing:  they don't make us complete.

A great self-assessment for your trading would be to catalog your peak experiences.  What do you do in markets that takes you beyond yourself, that fills you with such joy that it reorganizes who you are and what you do?  If you cannot readily identify such experiences, perhaps trading is a significant activity for you--as it is for me--but perhaps it is not your path with heart.  Perhaps it is not what will bring you your greatest joy in life.

I can give no better advice:  Be what makes you joy-full.  That may or may not include trading; it may or may not include trading the way you're going about it right here, right now.

Pleasure and ego needs are the shiny objects that can capture our attention.  It is easy to become fascinated by them and fixated on them.  But that will not be your path to fulfillment.  Trading is worth pursuing only if you find something in markets that will sustain you above and beyond the profits earned.  The goal is not to survive as a trader; it's to thrive.

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Certain environments and activities facilitate joy and meaning and certain environments make it difficult to access such states.  It is when we exit daily routine and do more of the things that make us who we are at our best that we're most likely to find our bliss.  

It is not coincidence that each major world religion has its path of joy, often expressed as a personal relationship with the Divine.  In the Hindu tradition, it is called Bhakti Yoga, where practitioners seek to love the Divine with all their being.  In Christianity it finds expression in the pursuit of a relationship with an all-loving Christ who offers salvation.  In Judaism, we find joy--including music and dancing--as a central element in Hasidic philosophy and practice.  Islam, particularly in Sufism, views bliss as a function of the enlightenment that occurs when we find a balance between self-knowledge and awareness and knowledge/awareness of others. 

These are very different faiths, with very different practices.  All, however, provide paths for us to develop our capacity for joy.  It is in this way that spiritual traditions provide gymnasiums for the soul.

The goal is to make transcendence an ongoing part of your lifestyle.  What activities bring you joy and the flow state?  Overcoming physical limitations through running or exercise?  Connecting with others in need?  Communing with the beauty of nature?  Worshiping in your faith?  Spending quality time with loved ones?  When we do more of what energizes and inspires us and immerse ourselves in those activities, we become more than who we are during our periods of routine.

Imagine four people standing in a row.  At the far left is the depressed person.  Next to him is an unhappy person.  Next to her is a happy person.  And at the far right is the joyful person.  Think about how different that person on the left is:  he thinks differently about himself and others; he has a very different energy level; his work productivity is very different.  Now imagine that the person on the right is just as different as the one on the left, but in positive ways.  It's not just a matter of degree.  Joy transforms us.  We see ourselves and others differently; we see markets differently.  

Renewing our trading requires an immersion in the joy and meaning we can find in financial markets.  If you want to spend time finding your edge in markets, find what brings you joy in the processes of trading.  

You will not find joy in success.  You find success by following your bliss.

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Resources

When you experience joy and fulfillment in your trading, you want to learn as much from those experiences as possible.  In following your joy, you identify what in markets truly speaks to you.  Those are the elements that will fuel your development.  In this podcast, I emphasize that, to some degree and in some ways, we already are doing the things that bring us radical joy.  Those are the life elements and elements of trading process that we want to build upon.

Huston Smith's text, The World's Religions, is an excellent overview of spiritual traditions.  What becomes clear is that much of religion as a path to radical joy lies in the development of a personal relationship with the Divine.  Music, speech, and dance are important expressions of this relationship.  In the Breslov Jewish tradition, individuals go out into nature and carry on emotion-laden conversations/prayers/meditations with a very personal Creator.  Ecstatic dance is a feature of electronic music raves, not just religious practice.  Movement itself becomes a portal to joy when we unleash the body.

There are interesting overlaps between meditation and hypnosis, particularly in the intensification of attention.  It is this heightening of focus that allows us to internalize suggestions during hypnosis.  A similar self-programming may occur during meditation, when we focus on peacefulness or loving-kindness.  Immersion in prayer can also be a form of meditation and help program the mind.  Meditation can also be a portal for evoking joy and happiness.  When we meditate on joy or immerse ourselves in the joy of a loving relationship with the Divine, we exercise our capacity for bliss.  We usually think of meditation as a pathway to peace and tranquility, but the connection between meditation and hypnosis suggests that we can cultivate many transcendent experiences via meditation.  It is only a short step from this recognition to the development of meditative routines that develop many of our best qualities.  Loving-kindness meditation is a great example of such a routine.

As we saw in the chapter on renewing the body, our physical states can be crucial in accessing and developing the soul.  Our bodies typically occupy a very limited range of functioning during our waking hours.  Physical exercise has a profound impact on mood, reducing stress and enhancing well-being.  Similarly, dance can be a fresh way to experience ourselves physically and access new states of awareness.  It is no coincidence that ritual dance and music have been part of spiritual ceremonies among many native populations.  Research suggests that even simple activity, such as swinging on a playground, can cultivate cooperation and prosocial behavior among children.  Similarly, music has been found to increase empathy, even apart from the immediate musical experience.  Research collated by the Greater Good Science Center finds evidence for social brain, compassionate brain, musical brain, and resilient brain functions, which we can access through bodily action.  An unappreciated gateway to joy is through bodily expressions of joy.

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Key Takeaways - It is difficult to appreciate that our normal waking states are suboptimal, mere shadows of what we are capable of.  Beyond happiness and pleasure lies a level of joyfulness that provides us with extraordinary levels of creativity, insight, energy, and meaning.  The peak experiences studied by Maslow and that are characteristic of self-actualization are paths toward joy, potentially changing our life course in ways as profound as trauma, but positively.  What we perceive and act upon in markets are closely related to our mind states.  In states of joy, we become sensitive to what is meaningful and significant, renewing our trading and many other areas of life.

Practical Exercise - An important idea from this chapter is that joyful experiences, like negative traumas, are processed whole, with their emotional impacts.  This means they can be rather easily summoned/triggered by similar experiences.  Meditating on joyful experiences--and truly re-experiencing them--can return us to radically positive mind states and become powerful activities in our preparation for trading and our taking of breaks during the day.  Just as flashbacks can debilitate the traumatized person, they can energize and renew the person revisiting their peak experiences.  This is a powerful, practical, and unappreciated technique for daily renewal.
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