BarroMetrics Views: Winning Psychology

This is a huge area. Dr Brett Steenbarger devoted his excellent blog to this subject for many years; Denise Shull and Nazy Massoud have excellent courses  devoted to it. Clearly, I shall be unable to give D a comprehensive answer to his question.

And when I did a mindmap for this blog, the project crystallized  a subconscious awareness that unlike my approach to my trading and risk management plans, my approach to psychology is not linear. I have attached the mindmap so you can see the overlapping areas.

The best I can for D and my readers is to summarize the key ideas - and leave it to you to fill the gaps.

I define winning psychology as providing a set of tools that create an environment leading to the consistent execution of  our risk management and trading plan rules. We can categorize the topic into four sections:

1. Create and maintain motivation and perseverance
2. Create and maintain empowering states. (2) here serves as a link between (1)  and (3) to (4).
3. Effective learning of mindsets, knowledge and skills necessary for successful trading and
4. Tools to deal with the Barriers to Success.

The Mindmap addresses the issues raised by the fours points and Figure 2 provides the some sources for the various topics.

Here are the sources I have found very useful:

1. Motivation & Perseverance (includes Goal Setting): Jason Garcia’s Shift The Balance. It’s an e-book that is actually value for money.
2. State Management: Chris and Jules Collingwood.  No books as far as I know, but they do run seminar on  the subject. I was looking to bring them to Singapore but the marketing research just to hand suggests that there is little interest here.  http://www.inspiritive.com.au/
3. An Effective Learning Process: Anders Ericsson research has appeared in a number of books: The Talent Code; Talent is Not Enough; Bounce to name but a few.
4. Dealing with Barriers to our Success: in my view these are automatic negative self-talk, unrealistic expectations and our Default Future.

The MindMap then lists a number of useful tools:

• Landmark Forum’s approach - now you can buy a book rather than go to  the seminar - I found the seminar had excellent content but disliked the high-powered sales approach. The book I speak of is Three Laws of Performance.
• The Skill of Journaling runs as a constant necessity throughout this topic.  Dr. Brett’s work in this area is very good and I have provided only one link. Google him and the subject and you will find a gold mine.
• Neurology has found that acceptance of our emotions and their integration with our rational mind is the way to go. The old ideas of ‘trading emotionless’  has been shown to be undesirable and impossible if we are to function competently. Denise Shull and David Rock’s book”Your Brain at Work” are good references.
• Finally the tools of Visualization (and Meditation). There is a ton of literature on the subject - take your pick.

Dr Spackman’s Book The Winners Bible deserves a mention: not everyone likes to meditate.  The book provides an alternate path.

FIGURE 1 MindMap

FIGURE 2  Resources

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