Archives of “Mind” tag

rss

The Hard Problem of Consciousness -VDO

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #
  1 Comments

What is consciousness?

“I THINK, therefore I am.” René Descartes’ aphorism has become a cliché. But it cuts to the core of perhaps the greatest question posed to science: what is consciousness? The other phenomena described in this series of briefs—time and space, matter and energy, even life itself—look tractable. They can be measured and objectified, and thus theorised about. Consciousness, by contrast, is subjective. As Descartes’ observation suggests, a conscious being knows he is conscious. But he cannot know that any other being is. Other apparently conscious individuals might be zombies programmed to behave as if they were conscious, without actually being so.

Video after the jump

Optimism for Traders

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

  • When good things happens to an optimist, he says it’s permanent, pervasive, and personal. When a bad thing happens to an optimist, she says it’s temporary, specific, and not personal.
  • Because the optimistic trader looks with bright enthusiasm towards the future, she is able to be realistic about what has happened in the past and is happening in the present. A pessimistic trader who has limiting doubts about his future trading, may be unwilling to admit what has happened or is actually occurring.

Unavoidable Disappointment

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

If you’re trading for emotional satisfaction, you’re bound to have lots of problems and continue to struggle, for two reasons. First, often that what feels good is often the wrong thing to do. Second, the game of trading, and it is a game in many respects, involves being disappointed fairly often.

Even for profitable traders a certain number of trades will lose money, and even the winners don’t always work perfectly or match your exact expectations.

As a trader, it’s impossible to avoid disappointment, not every trade is going to work. You get stopped out and then see the trade go on to work without you, or you hesitate and miss the move, or you exit early to book profits and watch the move continue without you.  When you think about it, trading involves a lot of disappointment. I cannot think of any other job that involves disappointment on such a regular basis. Even the most successful traders experience this. No way to escape it.

When you experience a lot of disappointment you’re going to experience a high degree of stress. And when stress overwhelms you…and by the way, stress can masquerade as performance anxiety or pressure to succeed, the emotional part of your brain will run right over the logical analytical part of your brain.  You’ll know when that happens because that’s when your rules go out the window or you veer from your plan and you take a revenge trade or an impulse trade or you freeze up and hesitate. (more…)

Embracing Your Obstacles

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

There will always be people in life who envy you, who resent your success, who are threatened by your accomplishments, who do what they can to sabotage your efforts.
Those include people in a workplace who place politics and “optics” over productivity and innovation.  Those also include naysayers who don’t dare admit the possibility of achievement because that would undermine their excuses, their failure to make a difference.
You know who your friends are when you reach a breakthrough success.  Your friends are ready to celebrate with you: they share your joy.  Those who cannot celebrate with you?  Perhaps they’re struggling with their own demons.  Perhaps they are burned out and exhausted.  That doesn’t necessarily make them horrible people.  They just can’t be your friends. (more…)

3 Steps For Traders

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

So – are you ready?

Are you ready to unlock the greatness that you have within you to succeed as a trader?

Are you doubting that you have what it takes to succeed in the world of trading?

Well, we all have the same ability to succeed, you just have to know how to tap into it. Firstly, you need to understand a little about how you have ended up in the situation you are in now.

….. and let’s assume you are not where you really want to be, right?

Let’s get right to the point and identify what 3 things are influencing EVERYTHING in your life and giving you the results you currently have. (more…)

THE SUCCESSFUL TRADER … ACCORDING TO MARK DOUGLAS

  
Analysis, Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

douglasquote

There is a reason why so few traders succeed.  It is not for lack of study or effort or passion.  It is not for lack of education or a Bloomberg platform subscription.  It is not because only a select few have access to technical “secrets” (a.k.a. indicators).  No.  So few succeed at trading for the same reason that so few succeed at living an abundant life.

The unsuccessful refuse to think differently when faced with difficulties believing that luck has passed them by.  They do not succeed because the want of instant gratification and its fleeting rewards has replaced the need for sustainable, hard fought, earned rewards indicative of a mindset prepared to tackle failure as nothing but a mathematical equation: here is the problem now let’s find the solution.

The mediocre search for easy answers to difficult problems believing that the right answers to their questions are found somewhere “out there”.   The successful make difficult decisions where there are no easy answers, questioning whether their perception of what is out there is a distorted reflection of what is inside of them.

The best traders, according to Mark Douglas, think differently than others because they know that what is most important is “how they think about what they do and how they’re thinking when they do it.”

MENTAL FATIGUE : 5 SYMPTOMS & 5 REMEDIES For Traders

  
  Education
#  #  #  #
  1. -Symptom; You notice a missed opportunity, that would have resulted in a hypothetical massive gain.
    Remedy; You never made that amount of money. So you are day dreaming, therefore you’ll have to put effort in catching another trade. There is always another trade!
  2. -Symptom; You open a trade based on your bias and following Z Pattern trading method, yet the market turns completely around and goes south.
    Remedy; Your job is to analyze before you open a position, anything that happens afterwards is not anymore in your hands. You are not to blame, rather praised for being a sophisticated trader who sticks to the trading plan.
  3. -Symptom; You see a trade opportunity that doesn’t completely line up. Where your feelings tell you, that this is a sure winner.
    Remedy; Regardless of the outcome, you cannot trade based on your feelings and if that means that you let a few winning trades go than that is what you have to do.
  4. -Symptom; You are in a position that you believed is in line with Z Pattern trading method, but after a while you realize that you’ve been wrong. That means your perception of taking a trade at that time was manipulated by either yourself or you were influenced by your environment.
    Remedy; A successful businessman cuts losses short when he/she sees a flaw. So should you.
  5. -Symptom; You placed a trade and your Tp has been hit. However price continued for a potential far bigger gain.
    Remedy; You’re responsible for trading within the Z Pattern trading framework. 

Three Steps In Overcoming Trading Fears

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #  #  #

1)  Slow Down – That fight or flight response speeds us up.  Under the influence of an adrenaline rush, our thoughts race, our bodies tense, and blood flows shift to the motor areas of our brains.  When we sit still, breathe deeply and slowly, and focus our attention, we slow down the body’s fight or fight responses.  Cooling down when events heat up is a great way to stay mindful and planned.  The best way to cool panicky feelings is to keep the body in a chilled state incompatible with those feelings.

2) Treat Emotions As Information – Your emotions are either telling you about a genuine threat in the world or a perceived one.  The key is sorting those two out.  If you can stay mindful and use the emotion to trigger an analysis of the situation, you can either appropriately act on the threat or remind yourself that your reaction is more to the past than the present.  When you treat emotions as information, you go into information processing mode, not blind action mode.

3)  Rehearse To Perfection – Too often we step onto life’s stage without proper rehearsal.  Any situation that generates a threat response can be mentally rehearsed through vivid visualization.  If we can keep ourselves chilled when we imagine stressful situations and visualize ourselves acting constructively, we create new mind-body connections that eventually carry over to real life.  If you conquer a fear 20 times in vivid mental rehearsals, it’s much harder to overreact to the 21st situation that occurs in real life.

Goal-Setting, Discipline, and the Emotions of Traders

  
  Education
#  #  #  #  #

Discipline problems typically begin with experiences of frustration.

Frustration is a function of not meeting goals and expectations.
Many times, traders try to adopt psychological strategies for combating frustration. These can be helpful, but they don’t get at the root of the frustration problem.
If we do not set challenging, but feasible goals, we cannot experience ourselves as effective, successful people. Goals that are perfectionistic cannot be met and thus generate frustration.
The failure to set goals robs us of opportunities for cultivating a sense of purpose and well-being.
Goal-setting is not just essential to mastering markets; it’s essential as a tool of psychological management. We shape our experience of ourselves by controlling what we pursue and how we evaluate the pursuit.
.

Go to top