P1: JYS c06 JWBT039-Steenbarger December 29, 2008 14:16 Printer: Yet to come Remapping the Mind feel the horror of literally losing control of your mind and behavior. Much of the motivation to change faulty schemas will come from the awareness of the pain they inict in all aspects of your life. Automatic thoughts dont just enter our mind; they take over. We change when we sustain the motivation to stay in control of our minds.

Weve seen that reviewing your self-talk via audio or video recording and tracking your most extreme emotions during trading can alert you to your stinkin thinkin. Another powerful tool to help identify problematic schemas and thought patterns is to review your absolute worst trading decisions. Your worst trading decisions may or may not be your largest losing trades; they could be occasions in which you simply missed a golden opportunity. Youll know your worst trading decisions by your reaction to them, How could I have done that? That reaction is a fantastic tell, indicating that you truly were not in your proper mindset when you made the poor decision. At some level, when youre mystied how you could have been so mistaken or boneheaded, you are recognizing that your mind had been hijacked.

Once you identify these worst tradesand this will require a review of your journal, as well as a look back on your recent trading experienceyou then want to re-create the thoughts and feelings that led to the faulty decision-making. Normally we like to put such episodes behind us, with a simple reassurance that next time well trade with better discipline and preparation. But in this exercise, you want to perform a psychological autopsy and exhume your faulty decision-making process in all its gory detail. What were you thinking at the time? What were you feeling? What were you trying to avoid or accomplish with your trading decision?

The common thoughts and feelings during these poor trading episodes will be your clue as to the schemas that were being activated at the time. Perhaps it was a safety schema: you were telling yourself that you could not afford to lose paper prots or to take a particular risk. Alternatively, it could have been a self-worth schema, as you told yourself how great it would be if this trade hit a home run. Your feelings during these tradesthe fear, the overcondencewill provide valuable clues as to the automatic thoughts that were generated. Our worst trades come from reacting to our automatic thoughts instead of markets themselves. In my own trading, a common schema that is activated is a variation of the safety theme: avoid danger. To be sure, this can be a useful mode at 171 P1: JYS c06 JWBT039-Steenbarger December 29, 2008 14:16 Printer: Yet to come 172