What makes a successful sports trader?

In a nutshell: Belief!

Categories: The basics

“The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.” Henry Ford’s well known bon mot contains a depth wisdom which goes way beyond the obvious. So let’s delve a little deeper and examine what Henry Ford was saying.

To begin with belief, far from being straightforward, is a loaded term that contains many hidden conflicts.

Belief and trust are inextricably linked. Both are required to sustain success and to give meaning to our existence. Without belief there would be no world. You and I would not exist. With our beliefs we make our world.

Yet, few traders have a concept of what it means to believe. Belief without congruency and integrity is no more than a grain of sand that gets lost in the sea of consciousness. Our minds are so used to playing a superficial mental game, that what really is going on underneath the surface is completely hidden from view. Neuro science attests to the fact that as much as 98% of what you think is hidden from the conscious mind.

With that in mind do you still believe that belief alone gets you to lasting success?

Traditional psychology tells us that the quality of our experiences in life determines our points of view about the experience. Alas, this assumption is only partially correct, because your memory is flawed to begin with, and it does not have accurate, or full recall of a situation. (I will discuss this issue in my next article, as this fact has a major impact on your ability to place the right bets). For now, let’s be content with the realisation that memory is skewed.

If our beliefs are formed through skewed memory, our beliefs cannot be as solid as they may appear to the unsuspecting observer.

Beliefs derive from points of view and I can change a point of view at any time.

Rather than being rock solid, absolute and dependable, our beliefs are fickle, highly subjective and for the most part have no foundation in what we call “truth”. Your truth, or my truth, the only difference is the strength of the belief in it.

I might also say a belief is made up.

Henry Ford was both right and wrong in what he said about beliefs: Right in the sense that our entire world is purely belief driven. If the entire world decided tomorrow that horse racing was unethical for some reason, or in some other form passé there would be no more horse races.

Imagine waking up one morning and considering that most of what you had done until now was of no value for you any more. Beliefs change, just as values change, it is part of our evolution.

Henry Ford failed to see the vital importance of being able to uphold a belief against all the odds. Just because you believe that you are a super sports trader today with full congruency will not make you that super trader tomorrow. Our challenge is to believe whatever we believe with consistency and integrity for long enough to materialise in 3 D form in our reality.

However, as so much of the process that eventually shows up as a “rock solid” belief in your conscious awareness, goes on in the subconscious mind, you erroneously feel that you are a victim of your beliefs and are stuck with what you call your character traits and values.

Over thousands of years your beliefs have been passed down to you from generation to generation. They have become your master, rather than a highly effective tool of manifestation.

Our entire belief system is rooted in the collective consciousness.

This means that it is to a large degree impersonal and not personal to you. In fact, the collective pull on our belief matrix is so dominant that few people realise that they are predominantly thinking other people’s thoughts. You have to develop a high degree of mindfulness and learn to let go of much of your conditioning in order to be able to distinguish between your thoughts and thoughts that don’t belong to you

You may think you were born with a love for tennis, golf, or horse racing, when actually you are acting on a strong trigger, often either related to a powerful childhood experience, or to a genetic association in your family to tennis, golf, or horse racing.

While the above insight may come as a shock to you, here is a very empowering all be it sobering fact:

You can change your entire world simply by adopting new beliefs.

What distinguishes your ability to succeed from the next sports trader is the strength of your beliefs.

Power is about a deep anchoring in your innermost knowing. That anchoring is rock solid, non linear and cannot be accessed by the conditioned, linear mind alone. Whenever you are operating from the frontal cortex, the executive function of the brain, you are in limitation and survival mode. This is not the place from which to make decisions that empower you.

Everyone can learn to think from, what I call the “whole brain perspective”.

When you are in coherence, energy flows, you access the innate powers of creativity and intuition. The survival instincts recede to make way for the higher, more expansive states of creativity. The experience is a spiritual experience that enables you to go beyond your perceived limitations.

All successful people, whether they do it naturally, or have learnt to do it, predominantly operate in this way. There is no static success formula that works for everyone. Success is not linear and doesn’t unfold in an A,B,C, D fashion.

Success is about coming home to your true essence and to learn again to follow your own inner guidance without the interference of conditioning and the noise of what other people believe to be right for you. When you learn to cancel out the noise and tune into your own inner vision you will be successful in whatever you choose to do.

 

 

 

About Mercedes Van Essen

Mercedes Oestermann van Essen is an active trader, trading psychology coach and the author of The Buddhist Trader and other books on trading psychology available as digital downloads on her website: www.TheBuddhistTrader.com.

The Buddhist Trader book also is available on Amazon.
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