Eliminating Negative Self-Talk To Improve Your Trading

In today’s episode, we are going to be speaking about your negative self-talk and how this misunderstood concept actually creates your reality and your trading results!  How we talk to ourselves about ourselves and our world shapes our reality -unfortunately for the majority of the population, they live out their lives stuck as prisoners of the mind.  If you tend to beat yourself up inside when you make a mistake or worse yet, if you allow yourself to only feel as good as the result of your most recent trade, then you may be prone to negative thinking -  but if you are here with us today, then you’re in luck because we will provide you with some actionable steps to turn your mind into your best friend!  Did you know that on average, humans have about 12k-60k thoughts per day? Of those daily thoughts, about 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts day in and day out! So it is any surprise that the general population, yourself included, is so familiar with their inner critic?  The inner critic is who we face when trading so our success depends on our ability to remain positive and not feed into negativity! What is Self-Talk?

• The dialogue and conversation directed towards the self 
• Occurs out loud or internally; manifests as self-statements or things said about the self 
• Negative self-talk is any self-talk that puts you down, diminishes you, reduces self-confidence or self-esteem, or prevents you from being the best self 
• You might not be aware of inner dialogue but you engage in self-talk most of the time

What actually happens from a neuroscientific perspective when you participate in negative self-talk?

• Humans have over a hundred thousand neural connections within the brain; neural pathways are connected by and communicate with synapses; the more neurons that fire and communicate with each other, the stronger these neural pathways become. 
• Negative self-talk creates neural pathways within the brain; like walking trail on a forest; the more you walk it the more the trail gets etched out 
• Negative self-talk can increase levels of cortisol (stress hormone) and is also linked to other mental health concerns such as depression and anxiety 
• The choice of our language during our trading will definitely help to empower the decisions we make and help control our emotional state.
• Creating a new path is much like creating positive self-talk; the more you do it the more you will create neural connections

How  Negative Self-Talk Manifests itself in Trading

• When setting up for a trading session you might hear a small voice saying “ Will today be one of those losing days?” or even “I wonder if I can even get a good trade today” 
• Coming off the back of some great trades, you might start hearing that inner critic again saying “Most likely I'm going to blow it cause I will do something stupid” 
• After taking a losing trade “Ah why did I do that, that was stupid, I should’ve known that was a bad trade” 

So how do you identify and reverse negative self-talk in its tracks? Stick around until the end of the episode to find out some actionable steps to get you started! Resources

• Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy
• Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast
• Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here