Chapter Three: Discovering Yourself by Uncovering Your Self

An important implication of Chapter Two is that radical renewal is not about becoming a different person.  It is about uncovering the person that has been there all along.  Naomi was a playful kitten, but her neglect suppressed that facet of her personality.  She learned to respond to her environment with fear and self protection, stifling her affection and curiosity.  Given the opportunity to play as a little huntress, she became a loving family member.

We become stuck in life when the roles we occupy stifle the strengths we possess.  

We become unstuck when we find fresh roles that tap into underutilized strengths.

This has important implications for what we do in financial markets.  A radical renewal of trading--and life--occurs, not when we become someone different, but when we uncover who we have been all along.  Let's do a deep dive and see how that happens.

The Roots of Self Sabotage

For years, as I worked as a psychologist, I also found myself drawn to the challenge of trading financial markets.  As I mentioned in the previous chapter, I loved the research, the challenge, the ever-changing puzzles of markets.  To master that complexity struck me as rewarding in more than a monetary sense.

When I stepped down from my full-time work at the medical school, I finally took the opportunity to pursue trading on a full-time basis.

To my great surprise, I hated it.  Yes, I liked the intellectual challenge, and overall I made money.  But sitting in front of a screen all day, interacting with no one else, felt like death.  Even when I was profitable, I felt unfulfilled.

So I began to interact online with other traders, sharing what I saw in markets and helping them with the emotional roller coasters that inevitably accompany risk and uncertainty.  That I enjoyed--and indeed indulged in so much that I missed one trading opportunity after another!  I was so busy assisting other traders that I failed to act on my well-honed plans to make money.

From all appearances, I was sabotaging my trading career.  A friend even suggested that perhaps I was fleeing the uncertainty of markets by retreating to the more familiar role of being a helper.

That wasn't it, however.  

Sitting in front of computer screens and focusing all day on making money stifled the very strengths and passions that brought me to psychology.  I didn't feel afraid of losing money in markets.  I felt empty even when making money.  The role I had assumed in markets diminished my experience of myself.  It was altogether the wrong life mirror.

This was the exact opposite of my experience of becoming a parent.  The smallest interactions in those early years were alive and special.  When our youngest son Macrae became frustrated as a toddler, I picked him up, ran my fingers over him, and told him that the "evil spiders" were going to get him.  He became wrapped up in the game and soon was a hugging, giggling ball of love.  It was the Naomi transformation: the role of playing overcame the momentary frustration, creating a renewed opportunity to experience our bond.  Before long, whenever he felt frustrated, he called out, "Let's play evil spiders!"

When we are in the wrong roles, our strengths still seek expression.  This is the great irony:  what often sabotages us are not our weaknesses but our strengths.  Focusing on the needs of people was completely counterproductive to being absorbed in financial markets, but that was precisely where my focus needed to be!  My career renewal only came when I recognized the strengths suppressed in the trading role and used those to craft a truly fulfilling role as a performance psychologist in the world of finance.

What if your problem patterns are triggered by strengths seeking expression?  What if the answer to your stuck-ness isn't to discover anything new, but uncover--and be!--who you actually are?  For years, I engaged in dating relationships that we less than fulfilling.  I had it in my head that I should have a partner who was career-oriented, intellectually challenging, and fiercely independent.  None of those people made me happy, however, and I never fully invested myself in those relationships.  It was only when I met someone incredibly loving and caring toward her children and cats (and who just happened to be smart and career focused) that I was able to pour myself into the relationship that has been special for the past 36 years.

Sometimes renewal comes from becoming the fullest version of ourselves, not the person we think we should be.

Identifying Our Paths

It's difficult to uncover our strengths if we're not aware of their existence.

This is why so many change processes occur within relationships:  parenting, teaching, marriage, counseling, interactions with clergy, and self-help groups.  Others perceive what we are blind to, and our interactions with them mirror what we have missed.

Gina sought my coaching help after she seemingly sabotaged her new job at a firm, scattering her efforts among multiple projects.  As a result, she missed several key deadlines.  She was viewed by her supervisor as lacking discipline and, by the time she came to me, she felt like a failure.  

When I spoke with her, it became clear that she found her side projects to be fascinating.  She described efforts to help her team and long hours spent delving into possible solutions to team challenges.  It was clear that this was anything but an unmotivated, undisciplined employee.  With that in mind, I shared with her creative outlets that grabbed my interest--and that sometimes interfered with getting pressing work done!

At the mention of creativity, Gina's eyes lit up and she talked about art projects she was working on and how she loved to solve problems while listening to favorite music.  The day to day work of the office was important, she explained, but involved little originality.  It was problem solving that excited her.  How did I manage to get routine work done, she wondered.  

I explained that I try to find creative ways to do routine things.  For example, in one work setting I was required to keep notes of my meetings with people, but I dislike paperwork.  So I figured out a format for the notes that allowed me to build a database and identify what was most helpful for different people.  I love research and learning new things, and that made the paperwork meaningful.

With that example, Gina excitedly mentioned an idea to turn one of her work responsibilities into a team effort.  She also talked about joining other team efforts to help colleagues with their duties and to learn how they approached tasks.  I encouraged her to pursue this and she took the initiative to reach out to several co-workers.  The resulting arrangement led to greater efficiency (and happier supervisors!), ultimately improving everyone's work.

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Spirituality and Our Strengths

The ego seeks fun and stimulation.  The ego wants gratification-- and it wants it now.  What speaks to the soul is not so much fun and excitement, but fulfillment.  Our strengths are found in what we experience as meaningful and fulfilling.  Those things may not always be fun.  Indeed, it is often the pursuit of short-term comfort and pleasure that derails our path toward ongoing fulfillment.

For better and for worse, we are wired to pursue pleasure and avoid pain and discomfort.  Our spiritual challenge is to craft a life path in which we derive enjoyment from the activities that are fulfilling over the long haul.  We might derive stimulation from navigating the ups and downs of financial markets, but our greatest fulfillment might come from refining our sources of edge in markets--and discovering new ones.  As in Gina's situation, connecting with others to conduct research and review performance can add social, interactive dimensions to aspects of trading that might otherwise feel dry and dull. 

The spiritual path is not one that disengages from the world, but instead engages on the basis of strengths that make life meaningful and fulfilling.  A powerful formula for success is to find fun ways of doing the right things--in life and in markets.  If trading grounds us in who we are and what we do best, then our pursuit of the material can fuel our development of the spiritual:  our development as a trader becomes one and the same with our personal development.

Please note closely:  If you look back on your life, you'll see certain themes recur.  In different ways and in different situations, we encounter the same challenges.  These themes define our path.  Our spiritual mission is to develop by traversing that path.  When trading is successful, it is a way of fulfilling that mission.  When it is unsuccessful, it diverts us from our path.  Successful trading comes from the soul because it is part of our path, part of what we're meant to be doing with our lives.  Joseph Campbell, drawing on the power of myth, points out that all of us face a heroic journey.  A life lived well is one that navigates that journey meaningfully, in a way that enriches ourselves and others.  All great work is accomplished in sacred space.

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Had I addressed Gina as a lazy or undisciplined worker, I would have simply perpetuated the role definition that was stifling her.  By shifting gears and exploring creativity in her work and mine, we opened the door to an energized conversation in which she could fashion her own solution.  Gina's work was renewed because it was redefined--and it was redefined because it tapped into what she did well and found most meaningful.  

New Roles, New Life Paths

This wasn't the end of Gina's story.  Working well with others on team projects brought her to the attention of management.  Less than a year after being identified as an employee lacking focus, she was promoted and hailed as a rising star.  Her new responsibilities took her away from the work she found dull and allowed her to lead her own team.  

As a team leader, Gina knew all too well what it was liked to get bogged down in tasks as a junior member.  That led her to reach out to teammates and include them in the most interesting and challenging parts of her work.  This brought unusual loyalty and productivity from those teammates and a deep fulfillment for Gina.  Just as the process of writing and getting feedback from editors about my writing helped me internalize the identity of a writer, Gina's work with her team led her to experience herself as a successful leader.

What started as a new role snowballed and created a fresh life path.  In the right roles, we discover and exercise our strengths.  That enables us to find a radically new directions--in life and in trading.  In the wrong roles, our strengths are stifled--and that can create conflict and poor performance.

    
The key idea is that we find our path by focusing on what truly grabs us.  What grabs us is what provides us with well-being:  positive and affirming experiences of ourselves.

Research in what is known as positive psychology finds that well-being has multiple components:

*  Happiness and having fun;
*  Meaningfulness and fulfillment;
*  Energy and stimulation;
*  Relationships and closeness to others.

When experiences fill us with happiness, fulfillment, energy, and affection, we enter a qualitatively different state.  We feel more alive.  We become more creative, more productive, more passionately engaged in what we're doing.  Conversely, when we are bogged down in roles that stifle who we are, even basic tasks become effortful and drain us of energy and enthusiasm.

Well-being stems from what taps into our souls, not just our egos.  

The presence of well-being--the soul-quality of our experience--is the best guide to finding our paths of renewal.  This is because well-being comes from the exercise of our most fundamental competencies, interests, and values.  When new roles tap hidden parts of our identity, paths to renewal are revealed--and those can lead to new, exciting directions.

This has immense implications for trading.  Often, often we fail at trading because we do not leverage our strengths in generating ideas and managing positions.  We follow the trading methods and frameworks of others and never blaze our own paths.  If the process of trading does not lead you to feel fulfilled--not just happy over the latest profits--you know you are not on a path of renewal, not on your hero's path.

Tapping Into Our Solutions

So how do we figure out the strengths that can place our lives and trading on new and exciting trajectories?

One short-term approach to counseling and therapy stands tradition on its head.  Most of the time, therapy begins with an assessment of a person's problems and a plan for working on those.  In solution-focused brief therapy, the emphasis is on exceptions to problem patterns.  The idea is to explore what we are doing right when our problems are not occurring.

Marlon was a student who came to my student counseling office describing problems with negative thinking and depressed mood.  This interfered with his studies and social life.  He decided to reach out for help when a girlfriend broke up with him, citing his "negativity."

It turns out that we experience plenty of occasions when we are not dominated by our problems.  Those exceptions often are the result of things we are doing well without recognizing it.  Exceptions frequently occur at times when we manage to tap into our (hidden) strengths.  

When I asked Marlon when he felt at his best, he told me about his involvement in martial arts, where he had recently advanced in tournament competition.  In his lessons and tournaments, he explained, he felt strong and effective.  He loved the competitive aspect of martial arts, the emphasis on self-discipline, and the energy he felt when practicing.

Did Marlon experience himself as a "warrior" at school or when he was at home?  Not at all, he explained.  He felt that his parents didn't understand him and that he would never utilize most of what he was learning in school.  Most of the time he was unhappy.  He worried that his negativity would prevent him from ever having successful romantic relationships.

"So we have Marlon the warrior," I pointed out, "and Marlon the worrier.  When else does the warrior Marlon come out?"  

Notice what's happening here.  Marlon has entered a new relationship--and a new role--by coming to counseling.  If I use our time together to explore all the ways in which he feels negative and inadequate, I will only reinforce that experience of himself.  On the other hand, if we can turn the conversation from worrier to warrior, our relationship can provide a very different mirror.

Thus we explored other activities that lead to strong and effective feelings, from helping friends and working out to meeting new people.  It turned out that Marlon often felt like the warrior, only to see those feeling dissipate when he was engaged in classwork or homework.  I proposed constructing a "warrior schedule" by which he could organize his time.  Every morning and evening, he had to engage in activities that energized him:  workout activities, martial arts activities, social activities, activities with friends.  School, we decided, was his "day job".  It was outside of academic hours that he would maximize his warrior self.

This particular solution approach drew upon a method known as behavioral activation, which alters negative experience through ongoing positive activity.  Doing more of what makes us feel happy, fulfilled, energized, and close to others intensifies the mirroring impact of these activities--a great example of how doing impacts viewing.  Research finds that this is a powerful treatment for depression, as the energy from activating positive experiences creates a positive feedback loop, fueling further positive activities and undercutting negative mood states.

Marlon's breakthrough came in two phases.  First he invited a couple of friends to his dojo and showed them his practice session.  They were fascinated and ended up joining a beginner's class.  He helped mentor them, which cemented the friendships even further.  Second, out of the blue during a final exam, he found himself using a centering technique that he had learned for his martial arts tournament competition.  He found that the fixing of his vision, repetition of a phrase, and regulation of his breathing helped him see his opponent better and feel his opponent's vulnerabilities.  The same technique helped him focus on difficult items for the test and recall information he had studied.

This latter experience was a game changer for Marlon.  It was the first time he had the opportunity to approach his academic work as a warrior.  We explored ways in which his competitive skills could help him in learning from lectures, preparing for tests, and recalling information during exams.  For the first time, he began to enjoy the classroom, as he found a way to turn it into a competitive challenge of self- mastery.  His grades improved, his experience of himself was enhanced, his social circle widened--all by tapping into who he already was at his best.

It bears repeating:  Marlon did not need to change who he was.  In uncovering who he was at his best, he discovered a better life path.

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Meditation as a Path to Our Strengths

A practice that we find across the world's spiritual traditions is meditation.  There are many methods of meditative practice, but all involve several elements:  1) withdrawal from the day-to-day world; 2) self-regulation of activity, including movement and breathing; and 3) increased cognitive focus.  The net impact of meditation is to remove us from ego concerns and the usual distractions of daily life.  This allows us to access other aspects of our selves and, indeed, provides a powerful path to connecting with our hidden capacities.

In his book describing religious experience, William James describes "mystical states of consciousness" as a common element in the world's spiritual traditions.  Such states are experienced as ones of deep understanding and appreciation: ones of meaning and significance.  We do not create these experiences; rather, they come to us when we are in a receptive mode.  In that sense, the mystical experience is not so different from the creative insight.

Many religions define the Divine as both transcendent (creating and supporting the world) and imminent (a sacred part of our selves).  The Bible describes a process in which we were created from Divine breath, in the image of the Divine.  From this perspective, the mystical state is perhaps not so mystical.  It is our contact with a higher part of our selves: one that can find beauty, meaning, and purpose in the everyday, material world.  Meditation can be much more than a tool for relaxation and focus.  Emma Seppala notes a number of evidence-based benefits to loving-kindness meditation, for example.  When we meditate with loving, generous images and thoughts, we expand our own capacities for empathy and connection to others.  I have found that meditation with a focus on the warmth I feel when holding and playing with our rescue cats has enabled me to be much more accepting of my own trading (and life) foibles.

As we shall see when we explore the path of radical peace, meditation--and its close relative, prayer--is one effective tool for shifting our state of consciousness, tapping into, and expanding our strengths.  In pulling back from the world, whether on long walks in nature, trips to breathtaking destinations, or sitting cross-legged and breathing mindfully--we can tap into our life's themes and discover/uncover who we really are.  As Shunryu Suzuki points out, the Zen mind is a beginner's mind:  one that approaches self and world with humility.  He points out that the first step in finding "the marrow of Zen" is sitting perfectly, with complete stillness of mind and body.  In this state of radical openness, we can perceive ourselves, others, and markets in new ways.  Somewhere, in what we do with meaning and passion, there is a masterpiece.

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There is an important lesson here:  At some moments in our lives, we are already free of the routines and patterns that hold us back.  The odds are good that, as for Marlon, those are occasions when we are doing what we love, what speaks to us.  Those exceptions to being stuck--our experiences of happiness, fulfillment, energy, and closeness--are worth reverse-engineering.  They are powerful gateways to renewal.

What if, underneath all the poor, reactive, and random trading, there is a foundation of talent and ability?  Suppose you could study, study, study your best trades and uncover what you do when you win?  Suppose, like Marlon, you study yourself in the areas of life where you are passionate and successful and learn to apply those strengths to trading?

It's great to correct your mistakes, but it's in your shining successes that you can find your path to fulfillment--and your future in markets.  Hidden in your winning trades may be the key to your development as a trader.  So many developing traders look for one edge after another, one market after another, one trading style after another--all in a frantic search for success.  The reality is that our best trading is hiding in plain sight, when we explore what we're trading and how we're trading it when we're most fulfilled and successful.  

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Resources

*  The VIA Institute on Character offers a free questionnaire that assesses such character strengths as wisdom; courage; temperance; and transcendence.  The Positive Psychology Program offers this larger list of 92 strengths that might kick-start your reflection on what gives you energy that you can tap into in your trading.  One way to approach the list is to think of the three most fulfilling activities you've experienced in life and check the strengths that were directly expressed in those activities.  That will tell you a lot about what you need to tap into to do your best trading.  Research suggests that the degree to which we access our strengths impacts our quality of life and our work performance.

*  Here's a post on emotional intelligence and its relationship to trading results.  This post lists 24 key strengths and relates them to trading success. See also this post on solution-focused trading.  It's very important to identify what has made you successful in your life up to the point you started trading.  Very often those success factors are what we need to incorporate into our trading processes.

*  This important article points out that our energy level is a major determinant of whether we sustain access to our strengths.  So often, we focus on managing our time rather than managing our energy.  See this useful Harvard Business Review article from Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy.  As we will see a little later in this book, a different way of uncovering our greatest capacities is to review the life events--the peak experiences--that have most inspired us and given us energy.  

*  Traders tend to focus on personality strengths--and those are important--but equally important to trading success are cognitive strengths.  How we process information is key to our success in generating ideas and identifying profitable market patterns; see this post for a helpful explanation.  Think about your greatest successes and how you accomplished those during your schooling, in your work, and in your relationships.  The odds are good that carefully reviewing your greatest achievements will illuminate your strengths in processing information.  It is those information processing strengths that you want to incorporate into your trading process.  A great frontier in trading is exercising the brain functions most closely associated with our trading successes.

*  Here are worthwhile posts on four ingredients of trading success; three process elements associated with success; three questions to ask of any market; and three best practices of successful traders.  Suppose you rewrote those articles to describe the specifics of what you do when you trade at your best.  From those articles, you could create a report card to grade your trading each day or week.  That would be uncovering your best self and using it to inspire improvements in your future trading.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS - Many times we fail in our undertakings when what we're doing and how we're doing it does not ultimately play to our greatest strengths:  our values, talents, skills, and interests.  Successful trading lies at the intersection of market opportunity and our particular strengths.  That sweet spot will accelerate our development by energizing our learning and sustaining our focus.  What provides us with our greatest well-being points the way toward our optimal development.  In our successes can be found a blueprint for our ongoing success.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE -  Revise your trading journal to include peak experiences that you encounter:  experiences of happiness/joy; meaningfulness/fulfillment; energy/enthusiasm; and connections to others.  Clearly identify what you were doing to achieve those peaks and look for common threads.  The idea is to make the activities that yield well-being an ongoing part of your trading process.

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NEXT PAGE:  CHAPTER FOUR

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Chapter Four: Radically Renewing Our Relationships

In Chapters Two and Three we explored how roles that tap into our most fundamental values, interests, and talents can set us on new life trajectories.  We don't change simply by motivating ourselves or rehearsing self-help techniques.  We renew our lives by finding roles that tap into our passions.  These provide us with powerful mirrors that enable us to experience ourselves in new, energizing ways.  In short, we internalize our actions.  What we do shapes who we become.

Can this apply to our relationships?  Can we renew our romantic relationships?  Our relationships with our children and parents?  Our friendships?  How about our relationship to markets?

It turns out that one of the most powerful gateways to personal change lies in the radical renewal of our most meaningful relationships.

Let's take a look.

Finding Your Bond

There is a popular saying:  Use it or lose it.  If we don't use our muscles, they will atrophy.  If we don't exercise our minds, they become dull.  The same applies to our relationships.  If we don't grow and nurture them, they stagnate and wither.

What we've seen is that the great enemy of all renewal is routine.  This is especially true in relationships.  When couples first meet, everything is new.  Each activity is a shared adventure.  Time together is precious.  Too often, with the demands of work/career, maintaining a home, raising children, and keeping up with daily tasks, quality relationship time is shunted to the back burner, relegated to our leftover moments.  In those situations, after the day's work is done, each partner is too exhausted to engage in shared adventure.

Vacations can be special precisely because they allow us to vacate our routines.  We leave work and home, travel to new places, and engage in unique activities.  Some of my fondest memories of childhood involve car rides from Ohio to Florida and trips to the beach in winter.  Those were times together, when we most vividly experienced ourselves as a family.

This dynamic is no less common in friendships.  After a while, friends get together in the same ways, engage in similar conversations, and do the same things.  Many couples I know socialize with other couples by going out to eat and chatting about the latest events.  There is nothing wrong with that, but there is nothing renewing in it either. Same roles, same activities, similar settings.  It may fill time, but rarely does it nourish the heart, brain, or spirit.

Suppose friends took a course together, learned new things, and shared their insights.  What if a couple took an art class together?  An exercise class?  A cruise to new cultures and destinations?  Suddenly roles and activities shift.  That is when we are most likely to experience each other in fresh, exciting ways.

What is a honeymoon?  It is a structured activity for newly married couples when they go away and experience life as a couple.  Typically the location is special and the focus on each other is exclusive.  We make relationships special by doing special things together.

There is a deep psychological reason why honeymoons follow weddings:  The honeymoon punctuates the marriage commitment.  You vow to share your life with another person and then you follow through:  you share amazing experiences.  What better way to treat another person as if they're the most special person on earth?

Suppose we thought outside the box and decided that every anniversary was to be a renewal of vows and a honeymoon?  Now, every year, couples could invite their friends and family, reaffirm their commitment to one another, and spend amazing time together.  Every year you could be part of your friends' and siblings' renewal of bonds and they would be part of yours.  The specialness of marriage would become part of ongoing specialness.

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The Spirituality of Relationships

True love takes us outside of ourselves.  When I deeply experience a bond with my wife or one of my children, there is no ego in that.  The feelings of specialness connect us to the present; there's no fretting over the past or concern about the future; no worries about profits and losses; no preoccupation with success or status.  When we're immersed in the present, connected to one we love, we access a different self.  That in itself is renewing.

When we love something, we lose our (small) selves.  True love, including a love of markets, is transcendent.  We cannot reach such a point if we treat the market as an adversary.

Recently, after enjoying a close time with family, I began trading during morning hours in New York.  There was unusually high volume, particularly for a holiday period, and there was elevated volatility.  I watched, assessed, then watched and assessed some more.  The ebb and flow of buying and selling just wasn't making sense to me.  Suddenly a strong feeling came over me.  "Don't do this to yourself," I thought to myself.  "You don't have to trade.  Nothing here is making sense."  So, I turned off my screens and spent the morning working on this book.

What was unusual about this episode is that I normally don't talk to myself in such a fashion.  My normal mode, if the market wasn't making sense, would have been to double down on finding patterns to trade.  After the close family time, however, my self-talk was more empathic.  I didn't need to trade, and there was no true edge that I could discern.  Being close to those I love helped me access a different set of motivations and perspectives.  Rather than get chopped up and enter the holiday frustrated, I did some good writing--and felt at peace with my decision.

One trader I worked with a little while ago reminded me of the no-drama llama.  Early on he informed me that he didn't like to put trades on.  He didn't enjoy placing his money at risk.  His default, therefore, was to not trade unless something so clear showed up that he absolutely had to trade it.  He loved markets, but disliked trading.  His joy was uncovering those occasions when everything lined up, across markets, across time frames.  It didn't happen often, but his win rate on those occasions was very high.  He was patient with the market the way we might be patient with a little child first learning to walk.  With that child, we accept that we will move at his or her pace:  there's no rush, no need to make something happen.  That was the trader's attitude toward markets.  Once he took the ego out of the equation and didn't need to trade, he was free to appreciate the market for what it had to offer.  Quite simply, he had a different relationship to markets than his peers.

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But why not take it a step further?  Why couldn't every vacation for a couple be a honeymoon?  Why couldn't family vacations be family honeymoons?  The odd thing about my vividly remembering the family trips between Ohio and Florida is that those were long, long periods stuck in a car.  And yet I recall them with heartfelt fondness.  The time together made the experience special.

Bond is a verb, not just a noun.  We don't have bonds with people.  We bond with them.  What renews relationships is the act of bonding:  generating energizing ways to experience closeness.  Creating meaningful, shared experiences is a powerful gateway to renewed bonding.

How we approach markets determines our relationship to markets.  A central flaw of many traders is that they approach markets out of ego attachments, not out of an appreciation of the markets themselves.  If we formed human relationships on such a basis, those would not last long.  Too many traders are interested in trading markets before they truly get to know markets.  Often, they make the same mistake in pursuing human relationships.

But once love is achieved, it never dies.  It has to be killed.  A great way to strangle a relationship is to start with we and then focus on me.  I've known successful traders who lose it all once they bump up their trading size and risk-taking.  Once it becomes all about the P/L, all about the "me", the sensitivity to market patterns--the "we"--flies out the window.

Finding Your Deepest Bonding

Some of my most satisfying and meaningful bonds have been with the cats Margie and I have adopted.  For a long time that puzzled me.

All of our cats have been rescue animals and all but one has been female.  Most came to us challenged in some way.  Mollie was a neglected cat whose untreated eye disease left her blind.  Mia and Sofie were abandoned kittens picked up by Animal Control authorities and scheduled to be put down before they were rescued at the last minute.  No one wanted them because they were sick.  (Sofie, initially named Sakura, was only 26 ounces at 5 months of age, with chronic digestive problems).  Naomi, as we learned, was a neglected and mistreated kitten; Marlo, dropped off in a neighborhood by a family that no longer wanted her, came to us out of hunger.  Gina and Ginger were unwanted as well--a bonded pair stuck in a shelter.  They were no longer kittens and thus no longer of interest to people adopting.  Aries, like Mia, came to us from a kill shelter in rural Kentucky, where no one wanted to adopt a black cat.

All became incredibly loving, healthy family members, as Sofie's more recent picture below illustrates:

My day typically begins very early in the morning to follow financial markets and work with those overseas who trade and invest in them.  Before I tackle markets and emails, I greet each of the cats good morning, change their water and litter, and feed them their breakfast.  As I give each one their food, I say something loving and give a gentle stroking.

Do I do this because I'm such a wonderful person or because the cats need such coddling?  Absolutely not!  Strange as it may sound coming from a psychologist, for a long time I never really gave much thought to my routine.  All I knew is that the cats had been through a lot and now deserved to be loved and appreciated.

(As I have been writing this, Sofie brought her little rubber mouse to me and squealed.  This means that she wants me to throw the mouse so she can fetch it and bring it back to me.  I routinely drop everything I'm doing to play "mousie", which is one reason I get so little work done at home...)

But that was it:  because of their backgrounds, the cats evoke in me a profound sense of empathy.  I cannot raise my voice to them, even when Mia is chewing my papers or Sofie bites my chin in play.  Little Aries came to us as an active boy who had been alone much of the time in a small apartment.  Now he runs around the house playing tag with the girls, creating quite the racket.  What I feel toward them is like the tenderness we feel toward our children as babies.  Holding them, stroking them, loving them:  we're aware of their vulnerability and that awareness inspires empathy and deep bonding.

My work as a psychologist found renewal when I brought my relationship with my cats into my work with clients.  One trader I worked with, Tom, had grown up with a difficult relationship with his parents.  He had a turbulent life, making and losing large sums and going from job to job.  When I first met with him, my immediate impression was that he was one of the most obnoxious people I had ever met.  I wondered how his wife had stayed with him for so long!  He was boastful and intolerant, with little good to say about anyone.  I was deeply troubled by the fact that I was dreading meeting with him.  Maybe I should refer him to another therapist, I thought...

But, no, that would only continue his pattern of failures and rejections.

Then something dramatic happened in one of our meetings.  Tom experienced a trading setback and, for a moment, expressed fear for his position at the firm.  His facial expression reminded me of the fearful reaction I have seen from our cats shortly after we brought them into our home.  They had no idea what was in store.  The cage in an animal shelter was familiar...now they were on unfamiliar ground.  

That was when I started visualizing Tom as one of my cats.  Immediately, I saw him as a damaged person needing to assert himself to ward off his painful past.  Before our next meeting, I gathered an image of one of my cats in my head, visualized holding her and comforting her when she was threatened, and then began our meeting.  

Immediately my tone toward Tom changed.  I was welcoming, exactly as I am in the morning toward the cats.  I asked about his week and complimented him before he could get out a word of boastfulness.  At one point I got out of my chair, put my arm around him, and told him that I was proud of his progress in self-mastery during difficult trading.

To my surprise, Tom opened up about his feelings of isolation growing up and his fear that his wife would leave him.  Gone was the air of ego.  Instead, he spoke softly, candidly about the one relationship that had seen him through his turmoil.  He spoke of his infidelities and his episodes of anger.  To my surprise, he cried.

This was a different Tom.  We spoke about making amends and, yes, we spoke about empathy and placing himself in his wife's shoes.  He knew as a child what it was like to be mistreated.  Could he visualize himself as a little boy and reach out to that hurt child?  Could he visualize his wife as a hurt child and reach out to her?  He had achieved greater self-mastery in his trading...now could he master his past?

From that time forward, I felt closer to Tom than other people I was meeting with.  I am convinced he felt that from me, triggering his sense of empathy, renewing his marriage, and also repairing his fragile sense of self.  I was able to help Tom by drawing upon one of my greatest relationship strengths, ironically developed with cats.  I became a radically different psychologist when I learned to call upon the empathy that was always there, but covered over by my own personalized reactions.  Had I responded from the ego, I would have referred Tom to someone else.  Responding from the soul, I became an effective therapist.

The Spiral of Generosity and Gratitude

A while back I wrote an article that reviewed research on generosity. The evidence is dramatic: when we give to others--even in small ways--we experience enhanced physical health and emotional well-being.  Similarly, there are tremendous emotional and physical benefits when we feel grateful for the good things in our lives.  Research that I covered in the article found that successful relationships, from romantic relationships to teamwork relationships at the office, display upward spirals of generosity and gratitude.  In a successful relationship, members reach out to each other--and the resulting gratitude inspires efforts to give back.

Radical generosity is a powerful way to create gratitude in others and engage them in the rising spiral of engagement.  What is radical generosity?  It is going above and beyond.  It is wowing another person with the depth and sincerity of your actions.  When I put my arm around Tom, it was a spontaneous gesture, but it also was something I rarely do with people.  He was deeply touched, later mentioning that no one outside his marriage ever hugs him.  The generosity of a hug was like my spending morning time with each cat:  a heartfelt act of bonding.

How could you surprise and delight someone you love?  How could you go out of your way to reach out, to spend quality time, to open up?  The most powerful giving, often, is giving of ourselves--and going above and beyond in offering that gift.  When Margie retired from teaching, I made reservations at a restaurant we liked as part of our celebration.  What she didn't know is that I invited our close relatives and flew them in for the event.  When Margie got to the restaurant, her family surrounded her to be part of the special occasion.

That memory is vivid, even after decades of marriage.  Powerful emotional experiences are a gateway to changes we make in our lives, but equally so can be gateways to the ongoing renewal of our relationships.  Doing special things has an amazing way of making people feel special--and that brings out the best in all of us.

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What Are Your Emotional Experiences in Trading?

Here is a powerful principle:  Over time, the dominant emotional experiences in our relationships define those relationships.  What we feel most deeply and consistently in relationships is what we internalize.  That is why abusive relationships are so damaging, and it's why loving relationships can be transforming.  Strong experiences of enjoyment, love, appreciation, and support lead to bonding.  Strong experiences of frustration, fear, and uncertainty undercut our security and confidence.

We internalize, not just what we do, but what we feel.

So what are your dominant experiences in trading?  Do you experience anger, fear, frustration, and confusion, or is yours an experience of learning, understanding, appreciation, and fulfillment?  This is a reason risk management is so important, and it is why we need to trade in simulation mode while going through our learning curves.  If we build painful, negative experiences while trading, we create painful, dysfunctional relationships with the very markets we're trying to engage and understand.

By viewing trading as a conversation that I'm having with the market, where my job is to be a good psychologist and listen to the flows of supply and demand, I create a unique relationship to markets and trading.  It is when I feel and understand what the market is doing that I can structure my best trades.  Often this is at points where cycles of different duration line up.  My dominant emotional experience at such times is not unlike my dominant experience as a coach or therapist:  one of empathy and understanding.  This relationship experience with markets keeps trading fresh and engaging, allowing me to devote full attention to the communications of the market, listening, listening, listening before acting.

Consider:  Your trading process defines your relationship with markets.  If that process draws upon your strengths, that relationship can be fulfilling and empowering.  If your trading process lacks meaning and vision, and especially if it channels your fears and frustrations, then you build a dysfunctional relationship with markets that can only impair performance.  Many traders hope to feel good by making money from trading.  It is just the opposite.  Your emotional returns from the trading process--from your relationship with markets--help shape your financial returns.

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Think of it this way:  In every relationship--as a colleague at work, as a parent, as a spouse, as a family member, as a friend--you are a mirror.  Everyone who interacts with you will come away with some experience of themselves.  And, through your interactions, you will emerge with experiences of yourself.  It's a powerful psychological dynamic that I named after our youngest daughter: We become the person we experience in life's mirrors.

So what does this have to do with trading??

As we've seen, we have relationships with the markets we trade.  We can view markets as adversaries.  We can view them as challenges.  We can view them as threatening.  We can respond to them in ego terms, as sources of pleasure and pain.  Even when we trade solo, we never are alone.  We always interact with markets.

For many of us, the relationships we have with markets would be completely dysfunctional if we had them with people.  How often do we do special things with markets?  How often do we engage in those spirals of generosity and gratitude?  How often do we find deep fulfillment in our market dealings?  Conversely, how successful would our personal relationships be if we experienced the kinds of fear, greed, anger, and regret that punctuate much of our market experience?

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How We Trade Shapes Our Relationship With Trading

Earlier, I mentioned that I had tried my hand at full-time trading many years ago.  To my surprise, I disliked the experience.  It kept me from the kind of helping activities that drew me to psychology in the first place.  My relationship with trading was stifling, and that created barriers to success.

What I came to appreciate was that an important ingredient in my relationship with markets is time.  Sitting in front of a screen from early morning to late afternoon every weekday feels, to me, like a prison.  It prevents me from writing, from working with people, from studying, from doing things with family.  

Partly to accommodate my work needs, but also to accommodate my personal needs, I developed a way of trading that fully engaged me in the morning hours only.  I discovered patterns that occur at particular times of day when institutional desks are most active.  Instead of trading smaller size and putting on more trades through the day, I traded larger size during the morning hours, leaving room to hold smaller positions as active investments as market conditions allowed.  During my morning time, I could be fully absorbed in market research and trading.  During other times, I could engage in the other activities that bring me meaning and energy.  By making trading fit into my time rather than throwing my time into trading, I took an activity that had been stifling and made it quite fulfilling.

  How does trading fit into your life, or are you making your life fit into trading?  

We internalize what we do and what we feel, but also we internalize what we spend time on.  We absorb our experience.  A surprising proportion of the stressed-out traders I've worked with make their lives fit into their trading, not the reverse.  Trading controls their experience; their self-control and self-mastery does not guide their trading.  Too often, this is justified by citing a "passion for trading".  But if we just look at those traders' experience, it is anything but passionate.  They are miserable.  Being controlled by a partner in a relationship is part of the dynamics of abuse, not fulfillment.

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One amazing transformation I've observed occurs when traders team up to support each other's trading.  With a trading buddy, you can share views and engage in daily re-views.  You can support one another during challenging periods, set goals together, and celebrate victories.  Most of all, you can use your partnerships with other traders to enhance your accountability and deepen your commitment to trading success.  Connecting to the right trading partner becomes a path of radical renewal.  In giving to a peer, we gain much more in return.  Suddenly trading becomes an affirming mirror--even when we're drawing down!

Recall the discussion of my client Gina in Chapter Three.  She turned her work around by taking boring, individual work and transforming it into team-based activity.  That drew on her interpersonal and creative strengths and literally changed her from a marginal employee to a standout.  The same dynamic is possible in trading.  By radically renewing our relationships with markets--and channeling our trading through powerful social bonds--we can draw upon strengths that have remained untapped during market hours.  If some of your greatest assets are emotional and interpersonal, those may very well be your most promising paths toward trading success.  The implications are profound:  What we do to cultivate our personal relationships are precisely what we need to draw upon in our trading.

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Resources

*  How often do you experience gratitude during your trading reviews?  Research finds that gratitude positively impacts both our emotional and physical health.  Here is an excellent gratitude quiz from the excellent Greater Good site.  Here are 20 excellent video presentations on gratitude from the always-helpful Positive Psychology Program site.  Can we truly have positive relationships--with people, with markets--without gratitude and appreciation?  What would your trading process look like if you decided to maximize experiences of gratitude?

*  This article from The Pursuit of Happiness site points out the close connection between happiness and our relationships.  Five dimensions of positive psychology go by the acronym PERMA:  Positive emotion; Engagement; positive Relationships; Meaning; and Accomplishment.  This article from The Positive Psychology People explains the role of relationships in our well-being.  If you graded each trading week on the PERMA criteria, how would you score?  Can we really perform at our best without a positive psychology?

*  This article takes a look an important facet of our work as traders:  Does that work lead to self-actualization or a stifling of the self?  This article looks at the relevance of our relationships to our trading.  Here is a post on a neglected topic:  the importance of our romantic relationships to our trading.

*  How have relationships contributed to your success in past endeavors?  The odds are good that they might contribute to your trading success in similar ways.  Too often, trading is suboptimal because it is conducted in isolated, siloed environments.  How we engage others ultimately shapes our trading.  In this article addressing traders who are going through losses, I highlight a number of resources, many of which are also included in the Appendix.  Many of these are trading communities, which connect traders around the world for learning and mentoring.  Such online communities are a powerful way of channeling our relationship strengths to aid our trading.  Forming our own trading networks with peers we admire can accomplish the same purpose.  

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KEY TAKEAWAYS - Close relationships require sensitivity to another: the ability to listen, empathize, and take the perspective of the other.  For this reason, good relationships take us away from our own ego needs and ground us in something larger and more meaningful.  Traders always have a relationship with the markets they trade.  Many of the skills that make for good personal relationships help us become sensitive to market patterns and flexible in our trading.  Building our social and romantic relationships thus can help us become better traders.

PRACTICAL EXERCISE - Double down on the quality time you spend with people that matter to you, going out of your way to make the time meaningful to them.  Your sole goal is to make that other person feel special.  Then, replaying those experiences in your mind, bring that same mindset to your trading day, where you are going to simply listen to the market(s) you trade and respond to what you hear.  Let trades come to you, rather than anticipate what you think will happen or what you want to happen. 

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