Shrink Rap: Neutralizing Emotions During Trading, Part 1

For example, the windows in my home office look out to a lush green garden and trees in my backyard. When I turn to my left, away from my monitors, and look out to the garden, I associate it with peace and tranquility.

The market rises and falls, but the garden is always quietly sitting there, unfazed by news or market gyrations. The garden helps ground me, making me less susceptible to the tides of emotion that may come and go in reaction to blips on the computer screen.

The triggers, then, are the visual stimulation of looking at the garden and slightly shifting my chair to be able to see it. Both visual and kinesthetic triggers (the physical movement of my body and turning my head to the left) take me away from any fear or anxiety to something calm, stable and balancing. Shifting toward the garden gives me a few moments to remember that there's more happening than just squiggly lines on my monitors.

The point is that a trigger becomes strongly associated with a specific mental shift, and invoking the trigger elicits the desired shift.

While this trigger isn't a substitute for periodically getting up and going out into the garden to be completely away from the television and the streaming quotes, my writing, or whatever else I'm doing, it does gives me a moment of visual and mental refreshment and perspective.

It is easier to make the mental shift with an actual view to turn to, but it is not required. You can use a trigger to associate to a positive thought or to access an inner image that will serve the same purpose.

Accessing Inner Images

The trigger can be as simple as touching your left thumb to your left forefinger, signaling the inner search for a pacifying image that immediately neutralizes a fearful or greedy thought. Choose a trigger that is readily available and associate it with a neutralizing image that will work for you. As you experiment with this, you should notice that the association between your trigger and the positive thought or image becomes stronger.