The law of attraction and trading

Yeah, obviously you conscious mind does, you're unconscious mind does not. That's the whole point here - to condition your unconscious mind. It is your unconscious where all the learning, actions, reactions, emotions, instincts, ect. come from. And that's the place where your goals must be embedded.

If it were so simple people would be succeeding everywhere using such methods. The mind and emotions are typically complex and consciously handling them can be too -not always but for most people it is.

oh dear. let's just take your word for it. as for me, i suspect you are talking hogwash, and the unconscious mind just does what it does and cares not what people try to massage it into being 'conditioned' to... as if such a thing were even possible.

personally, i have a feeling that some day science will look back to times like this and wonder how we ever came up with ideas such as 'conscious' and 'unconscious' minds, and some wrists will be slit in despair at the thought of how much nonsense was spent dealing with this 'unconscious' part of our mushy head bits.

as for peoples success and lack thereof..... pretending to massage ones subconscious will not turn crap into gold. as for people who have the potential for success, then they might do well to spend some time mulling-over whatever it is they wish to succeed at, away from distraction, and let it stew for awhile to come to an effective solution. practice makes perfect. practice occurs in the mind, whether the body is asked to follow or not. if the body is asked to follow then the mind then has to deal with all of the external stimuli and this makes for less than perfect practice and leads to distraction.

you can't do a backflip solely by thinking about it. similarly, you can't do a backflip just by repeatedly jumping up in the air and landing on your head. you have to discover what stimuli you receive, and then your mind has to piece it together in a way that will lead to a successful outcome.

nobody is going to be the next forex king just by pretending they are and visualizing their vault of gold. you are either mulling over and generating successful ideas and gaining confidence in its potential for success, or you are mulling over .... whatever else. a basketball player visualizing a shot is not visualizing success, s/he is confirming a sequence of movements before then attempting to have their body recreate this visualized perfection.

the unconscious mind can go back to being unconscious.

Both of your post have contradictory to each other.

It's rather clear you have not studied psychology (preferably NLP would come closest to this subject) nor actually practise or experienced any results from what is being talked about here. You are concluding the same ideas many people do when they are ignorant to this subject.

I have just read through some of your posts from other threads and it seems you are ridiculously argumentative and tbh I just don't have the time atm.

assume and conclude all you like.

p.s. lots of people 'study' homeopathy and astrology, too. don't assert intelligence based on some perceived amount of study on any particular subject, whether the subject is valid or not. this world is full of dumb scholars.

- wanna learn how to swim? go jump in a deep pool of water without floaties.

This is true in learning to trade. Best way to gain experience is to pull the trigger and learn from mistakes.

- a basketball player would repetitively imagine themselves scoring perfect shots one after the other.

I'm pretty sure all athletes go through visualizations during preparations. However, the top athletes go through a different type of visualization. Instead of imagining scoring perfect shots after one another, the basketball player is imagining the process he takes for sinking that perfect shot. What his position should be pre-shot, how he's positioning his hands, how he's holding the ball, timing the release of the ball, etc.

The same visualization process applies to trading. You should visualize the market conditions, participant expectations, market and liquidity structure, and underlying themes that would generate your ideal trade. Conversely, you should visualize preventive actions to take in case market conditions change and your trade goes against you.

Visualizing yourself hitting trade after trade is counter-productive and will set you back when your ego is confronted by the market.

what is the difference between the athlete visualizing and the amateur trader visualizing? The athlete knows what constitutes a perfect shot. An amateur trader has no idea what a good trade is. Thus visualizing his idea of a perfect trade that has no place in reality, will not make him a winner. If you don't know how to swim, no matter how much you visualize, you won't be able to swim. If you don't know how to fly an airplane, no matter how much you visualize, you won't even be able to take off. Same thing in trading, if you don't know how to trade, you will not get there by just visualizing.

However, if a trader really knows how a perfect trade is done, then that's a whole different story. That's why I think this visualizing thing is completely useless to unprofitable people, it is only useful for already consistently profitable traders who just wanna increase their profitability.

this subject is somewhat even more difficult and complex than most. I would even say it can be harder than trading.

This is not some fucking vodo bullshit. This stuff works and I know it does because I have spent most of my life utilizing it and reaping the results from it. It seems confusing to most people to start with because it almost seems too good to be true. When you spend enough time studying this subject from various relative fields along with your own pragmatic trial and errors you will learn what works and what does not. I have currently only just start utilizing it myself for trading purposes.

How it works with trading - it is not typically mental rehearsal (in the conventional sense) in terms of what the past few posts have been concerned with. If, for example, you study how Roger Bannister managed to run the 4-minute-mile when no one else in history had done it before him, you might understand how mental rehearsal works (in the non-conventional sense). In essence, it's the development of the deep un/subconscious beliefs that ultimately results a reality for someone.

If anyone can be fucked to learn about it I recommend reading these books to start with to develop theory. Then methodology and practicality will follow from the theory.

General shit to learn; Psycho-cybernetics (Maxwell Maltz), Beliefs (Robert Dilts), Modelling with NLP (Robert Dilts), everything from John Grindler and Richard Bandler, the good old classics from Tony Robbins and finally the more out-of-the-box material from Joseph Murphy, Lynne McTaggart (The Field has a few decent things in it), Napoleon Hill (obviously) and some Brian Tracy.

This does not presuppose that you will succeed in trading instantly. It does not work like that. When you do what is necessary you will be intuitively guided to what you need, who you need and where you need to be in order to fulfil whatever goal you have - you will learn, experience, breakthrough, overcome, see, feel, resolve, ect. whatever is needed to get you where you need to be. This may sound like 'blah blah blah' now but when you actually persist in practise you will know exactly what I mean.

Anyway, this is my last post here because I know a lot of idealistic resistant posts will be made in response... and I really can't be bothered. If you care to learn, then do. If you don't care then just don't learn. Simples.

Nubcake, you are a crystal clear thinker and demystifier, and I enjoy reading your every post. Damn, we think the same way, dry and close to reality.

Tycoon, yes, these were my steps:

- throwing old beliefs and blockages away
- as a result, coming to the realization that something is possible, which seemed out of sight just one day earlier
- absorbing theory as it fits into you current state of mind (if you aren't ready, you cannot absorb it yet, despite reading it)


"You should visualize the market conditions, (...) and underlying themes that would generate your ideal trade."

That's it. Do it, search for it in your charts history and prepare for it.

Success and insight people

thx brutalpip. in tropical areas i'm also a dehumidifier...

as for tyoon, to be clear about this, yes, i have in fact read some of the books by the authors you have listed. some of this reading was a long time ago, and some of it as recent as last year.

i agree that this is not voodoo, but the logic behind the results certainly is questionable. hence, i question. there is no denying that if you sit in a corner all day and mull over how much of a failure one is then one is not going to feel better about themselves and won't take steps to make ones life better.

you can't progress through a building by closing and locking all of the doors. doing that will only trap you in a box.

but NLP, and this whole 'the secret' shit and the 'laws of attraction' and whatever new spin people will put on this all stems from a similar seed. people only have a limited amount of attention span. if you focus that attention on the wrong things then you will almost certainly get the wrong results. focus on the right things and you have at least given yourself a chance at getting to the correct results.

now, the part where a lot of spin is placed to make shit seem all mystical and magical and shit......... if you have a mixed attention between positive and negative aspects then you run the risk of getting distracted and consumed by the negative aspects, in turn placing all of your focus eventually on the negative things and forgetting...... yes, forgetting..... all about the positive things. you have closed your mind to the answers and devoted it to dealing with the road-blocks.

this is closing the doors in your mind before you have the chance to walk through the doorway.

negative thoughts are de-motivators, just as positive thoughts are motivators. they are self-reinforcing. focusing on the wrong shit will bring you to a stand-still. focusing on the right things will help keep you moving in the right direction.

NLP / the secret / yadda yadda blah blah comes across, to me, as just a nice little package designed for the small-minded to understand. it's a simple and easy package for the population at large to digest without having to stretch their feeble minds too much. it's akin to using mythology (or religion. same difference really) to explain things people can't yet get a grip on. it doesn't negate the reality of the effect, but the cause is not necessarily what it is sold to the masses as being.

the results are the results, but the reasoning behind the results are questionable and the way this stuff all gets presented is questionable.

i would almost go so far as to say that the way this stuff is presented is a type of white-lie, or splitting-hairs. it's just spin to get people to buy the stuff. it'll likely produce some degree of positive outcome for people who employ the beliefs they generate from the ideas presented to them by these books etc, but their beliefs are usually weak dogma that sits askew to the true cause of their resulting effects.

to summarize with an example. if i have to go north to achieve some goal and reach some destination, but i have a natural tendency to drunk-walk a little left and right all the time instead of making a direct line for my destination then i can still reach my destination by aiming for north, NNE, NE, ENE, NNW, NW, WNW.... and it's still entirely possible that if i'm facing due east or west for me to make it to my northern destination eventually through continual shuffles towards a northern lean. hell, i could start facing south and try and re-align myself to a northern direction.

but, if i have a natural tendency to drift off-course and get distracted with things in the wrong direction to where i need to go, then it is in my best interest to keep the concept of NORTH in my mind at all times and to keep this outcome in my focus for as much as possible, lest i find myself adrift in some other direction. by keeping NORTH in my focus i can continually correct my course as i discover myself drifting away towards east or west.

that is 'the big fucking secret'. be focused on the right things, and don't let the other shit get in the way and steal your attention. now someone pay me $59.99 for that one sentence, yeah?

side-note on nlp directly... to me NLP is a mixture of simply keeping the focus on the positive things, as mentioned above, combined with some memory tricks to give people very simple and potentially effective tools to help keep themselves reminded and on focus. it is a toolbag of mental rubber-bands, as in, when you stick a rubber band on your wrist to remind you to take the trash out (or tie a string to your balls or whatever it is people do to remind them of some non-typical task that needs to be done). this doesn't negate the results, but the way people speak of NLP and try to sell it to others always tends to come across as people selling it as something that it is not, or selling it as something that it almost is but with it dressed-up with a clown nose and big floppy boots.

people tend to take away the 'show', but fail to take away the reality behind the show. they see the actors, and not the stage-hands working behind the stage. you don't sell and advertise tickets to a play based on the hard work done by the props department and their hours laboring over painting background scenery. you sell and advertise based on the puppet singing and dancing on the stage taking the limelight. that is the person the audience responds to, and that is what the audience remembers. similarly with NLP and so on. they see the show, and don't see, forget, or simply ignore or don't understand, the mechanics in the background that makes everything come together. people then on-sell to others the show, and the truth behind the scenes is lost.

@ Tyoon


I am a big fan of Maltz and it has helped me both as a trader and as person.

Its not voodoo at all - just a common sense approach to life.

1. Maltz asks us to put set-backs in to perspective and accept defeats as being minor in pursuit of a major goal

When I think about primary school, failure was seen as a disaster - we are / were programmed to fear failure

2. Maltz tells us to set targets and get a plan - Do know how many people drift through life? The majority.

Yes, most people wont read the books you have recommended but then most people dont want to at least try to take some control over their own destiny.


@ Nubcake (dehumidifier - )

Visualisation is a small part of it.

Understanding / accepting yourself and being happy with who you are is most of it.

If you know you have a natural tendency to veer of course surely you would identify this BEFORE veering of course and take the more direct route, lest you are have a destructive side to your personality. This would save both time and energy.

Similarly with getting distracted.

I agree with you that alot of it is marketing for the masses (buy a book - get rich (blah blah) but as we know, the masses want e/thing spoon-fed.

I believe that successful traders have a good balance between following a simple system and knowing who they are. How they achieve this is entirely subjective. Personally, my system was never the problem - I was / am.

Steenburger refers to how there are different aspects of our personality and how these want attention during the day and I fully understand this.

How many times do we as traders feel the need to open a position which contradicts some of our rules? Often, right? Successful trading , I think, is the ability to recognise and manage these needs.

Anthony

without quoting your entire recent post because it is rather long, I do want to say that it was a great post and I especially liked the part about all the mystical mysterious BS is just to simplify something so that the feeble minds understand something. I think that part puts great perspective on the whole "law of attraction" crap.

A lesson I "learnt" not hundreds, but thousands of time, is this:

I am attracted to long candle bars, but burnt by them turning against me.

I am not attracted by price pausing and halting, doing nothing.

This is the law of attraction, it attracts me to things that have happened. This thing sits deep enough to make you work against logics for thousands of hours, as it so often erodes the decision you made - before your eyes could be deceived. Once you have thrown this slave-like attitude away, you have probably taken the biggest step towards true discipline. The rest is just technical questions.

These days we also have to be cautious about things which are a natural way of thinking, like for example walking down the sidewalk in the winter we should expect the sidewalk being slippery. The expectancy thought is good for preventing future problems of falling down the sidewalk but in the same time these expectancy thoughts as they build up in the subconscious mind could attract us to further slippery sidewalks or further falling events.
It’s important to be aware of these expectancy thoughts as they may be attracting thoughts and together with vivid positive affirmations it should bring great results. Managing these negative thoughts is another part of the task.
The attracting thought manifest through a frequency and some could be: knowingness, expectancy, certainty, fear, etc. These thoughts have something in common attached to them and that is knowingness one way or the other.
In the other words, there is a fine line between the expectancy or caution thought and the thoughts that will manifest.

Hey boss, this is a bit of spooky nonsense. Being cautious never caused any problems for me. Slow down before overtaking a bus that's stopped at a bus stop, will it "manifest" in people trying to cross?

Is anyone aware that one of the founders (fraudsters) of "The Secret" got into serious-deep-shit-trouble because he caused people to DIE.

The great message from The Secret was that you could sit on the couch and will the universe to bring you prosperity.

Granted, attitude has a great deal to do with success but you're much better off studying the markets and a trading method than to pay attention to that nonsense.

BTW.... his name is James Arthur Ray (co-conspirator to The Secret) and he was convicted of three counts of negligent homicide.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Arthur_Ray

You certainly have comprehension problems.

In the video she mentions about gratefulness,which makes sense as it is the antonym for greed. The same for fear-courage.

My two cents

Trading is really hard. It is seems like a lot of people who post to this thread are struggling with trading. It takes time, like anything new. I struggle as well. Just have to ask yourself if you really want to keep trying. If you do - then keep trying. If you don't then don't simple. No secret to it. There is no secret to trading. There is no rule book to follow. You have to make your own.

The hardest part, like others have said, is the emotional control you have to put in place. That is very hard - I struggle with that all the time!! Think about it, if I own a store and some guy comes in and is a total jerk, can I be a total jerk back to him? Of course not.

Regarding the secret and the law of attraction, my two cents, it is a bunch of rehashed ideas that exist in other places. Joseph Murphy for one but also in religious texts as well just not as catchy or easy to understand as the secret. The Hicks, Abraham Hicks, is another one. Who knows if Abraham Hicks is real or not. What I know is the message is simple, relax, if you want it, do it, you'll get it. And don't worry. I've known that my whole life - I don't really need anyone telling me that. I just like to hear it. Makes me feel good, when I get stopped out or make a stupid trade and lose money. Losing money, because of money's value to society (can't deny it) hurts us deeply. Researches proved it. It was in the discover magazine years ago.

That's my two cents