EP151: The Best Mindset Tools: What Are They?

Is it really your strategy that’s trapping you or is it all in your head?

In this episode of Truth About FX, Walters lets out some insider information on some of the best mindset tools that you can use — and where you can find them. Walter will also tell you what each one is and how you can use them to help you have that winning mindset.

Download (Duration: 08:22 / 10 MB)

In This Episode:
00:41 – routine
02:01 – switched on
03:35 – calm mind
04:50 – habits and beliefs
06:01 – tapping
07:36 – have it stick

Tweetables:
Calm your mind [Click To Tweet].
Focus in your strategy  [Click To Tweet].
Get into what makes sense to you [Click To Tweet].

Announcer: Sometimes, forex trading is a wild and wooly place to be. That’s why Hugh is here, to post your questions to Walter, the naked forex guy. Hugh’s got questions and Walter’s got the answers. Here at the Truth About FX Podcast.

Hugh: Hi, Walter. What are some of the mindset tools that you’ve noticed works over the years?

Walter: Yeah. This is really a good question, Hugh. I know we’ve talked about this quite a bit, just you and I off the record, whatever and so I know you have some input here. One of the things that I found really useful is to get into routine.

If you get into a routine, you can do things such as listen to a hypnosis track. What I like to do is use a brainwave entrainment track. What I want to do is put myself in a really good state.

Usually, that’s going to be like Theta. You want to be in Theta or possibly Alpha but Theta is pretty good. And then, I want to make my trading decision. For example, in the morning, what I’ll do after my kiddies are off for the day, I will have a look at my charts.

What I like to do is I like to listen to my brainwave entrainment track for Theta and then I’ll scroll through my charts and I’ll make a recording for the members in the Forum. I’ll just see what I am going to do, what sort of trades I’m going to take later on in the evening when the London market opens. That’s how I run my day. Another thing that I like to do is I like to use a thing called the “NEO Neurophone”.  

This is an interesting tool. I’ll put the link in the show notes for people that are interested. I don’t think you can buy one anymore. They were for sale in Indiegogo and they weren’t and then they were again and they weren’t.

I think you might have to find like a used one on eBay or Amazon or something but basically, what it does is it’s like a imagine if you have like a magic pill or whatever that you could take and then when you take it, your brain is extremely switched on.

Have you ever had a feeling where you just felt like you were on and you could do whatever you could focus? You can make the right decisions. You’re just really maybe smarter or better equipped than you’re normally are. Have you ever have that feeling?

Hugh: Yeah, for sure. They call it “being in the zone”, right?

Walter: Yeah, it’s kind of like that. What you can do is you can wear one of those and it looks kind of funny but I used to walk around with one on but then I had to put a hat on to hide the wire and stuff.

I’ll wear one when we do this podcast. I’ll wear one when I do my backtesting. What I’m trying to do — it does a couple of things. The NEO Neurophone, you can do a couple of things.

You can learn a language or you can put some information into your subconscious. You can also just basically increase the blood flow to your brain in a way that you’re switched on and you feel like you’re just on your game.

That’s really what it’s for and so it’s useful if you’re — I like to use it during backtesting. You could do it when you’re trading as well but for me it’s really more about learning new things.

If I want to put some information into my subconscious, I can do that with it or I can just wear it when I’m doing my backtesting. That’s another thing. You can also learn to meditate.

I know you’re a big fan. You turn me on to the Muse Tool so that’s pretty good because it’s like a biofeedback tool. It can teach you to know when you are relaxed, when you’ve basically pulled yourself down into an Alpha. That will give you a really good feel for how to basically get to a calm mind.

Why would you want this though? Why is it important to have a calm mind as a trader? What we want to do as a trader is we want to focus in on what’s going to work for us, which is going to be executing our trading strategy.

It’s not going to be thinking about, worrying about, or being concerned about other issues. It’s going to be just simply focusing in on our strategy. The best way to do that is to calm your mind whether it’s through the brainwave entrainment, the NEO Neurophone, or just simple meditation.

Finally, the last thing that I like to use — that I’ll mention here anyway — is hypnosis. Hypnosis is great because you can take time to do it at anytime of the day. It’s only going to take you in most cases about 30 minutes, 20 minutes or so.

It’s a way of building up the confidence in your trading. I have a hypnosis track that I can put in the show notes for you. That I had a company that does hypnosis track. I had them create this one for forex traders.

They had one for traders and I’d say, “Hey, it’s not very good. Why don’t you guys do one for forex traders?” And they said, “Yeah, what should be on it?” I said, “Why don’t you put this on?” And they did.

That’s available for you too. It’s relatively cheap and it’s a way for you to actually create habits and beliefs in your trading in such a way that you build up your confidence as you go.

Those are the things I think that, probably, one of those — at least one of those — are probably be interesting to some of the listeners and those are the things that I focus in on. What about you, Hugh? What are some of the things you are using now?     

Hugh: I’m still getting to the stuff that you showed me, actually. I know you showed me the NEO Neurophone at the Mastermind and that was cool. I haven’t been able to get my hands on one yet but I definitely want to try that out.

The hypnosis tracks that you recommended, that you talked about, was it working very well? It’s kind of deceiving because I think in the past, I would use those things and I would use it for like a week and then I’m thinking, “Aww, this doesn’t work.” In reality, you have to use it for a month at least, right?   

Walter: Yeah. Definitely a month.

Hugh: For me, it is helping. I can tell because in the past where I may have given up on something, I now find myself like trying to empower through it and I can see the progress. It definitely works, at least for me.

Walter: I know you were getting into tapping that we had, that Adam Hartley shared with us, at the London Conference. What about that? Has that been something that you have been using?

Hugh: Yeah, that’s been helping. I haven’t used it much lately because I haven’t really felt the need to but there were a couple of things that I kind of wanted to release the emotional attachment to I guess and tapping is really good for that.

Walter: Right, that’s excellent. There’s a lot of stuff out there. I mean, subliminals is another one that I like to use so that’s another thing that you might look into. I can put it in the show notes.

I recommend inner talk, I know that they play good ones. Be careful there because some of them, you have to look at the research on that because some of them probably aren’t going to do anything. You have to be careful there but there are a lot of different ways to approach it.

Some people don’t like meditation but they like hypnosis. Now, I would argue that they’re essentially very, very slimmer things but some people don’t like brainwave entrainment but they like subliminals.

You just have to get into what makes sense to you, maybe it’s tapping or hypnosis or whatever it is. The thing is to build it into your habit. Make sure that you use it over and over again and that’s where you’ll see the big gains.

If you’ll just listen to subliminals one night or one day you listen to your hypnosis tracks, that’s probably not going to do much. You’ve got to build it up and that’s because when you think about it, makes sense.

We have all these things in our subconscious that we have accumulated over the years so it’s really going to be difficult to put something new in there and have it stick because we have all these other ideas that are directing our thoughts and our actions in our subconscious. We really need to work hard to web something in there so that should probably makes sense to most people.        

 Hugh: Yeah, totally. I mean you can’t undo it like 20 or 30 years or whatever in a week.

Walter: Exactly. Great question.

Hugh: Okay, cool! That’s really cool stuff. I really like that stuff. Thanks, Walter.

Walter: Thank you.

SHOWNOTES

NEO Neurophone
Hypnosis Track
Subliminals

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