Trading on Target: How to Cultivate a Winner's State of Mind

TRANSFORMATIONS AND EPIPHANIES

Few of us have difficulty with the notion that life turns on a dime. We have all seen how quickly an act of nature can wipe away immense human structures built over a long period of time, or how quickly a fortune or reputation can disappear. Why is it so difficult to accept the fact that things can turn around that quickly in a single day? One of the first things I learned in my training in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) was that transformations could be nearly instantaneous. When an old and deeply destructive mental association is replaced with a positive one, a trader is as instantly freed from the chains of his old self-destructive pattern as if he had been suddenly paroled from a life sentence. For example, when a trader has an unconscious association of pain and loss with change of any kind, he is unable to succeed in his profession out of fear of experiencing those feelings. But, if he can replace that negative association with one of adventure, hopefulness, and even joy, that same trader will suddenly be open to all manner of change. The same principle applies to epiphanies—those sudden realizations that alter one’s basic understanding of one’s life. I have seen traders come to sudden realizations that profoundly and instantaneously transformed their lives.