Q&A: How Can the Sedona Method Help Traders?
Written on March 23, 2008 by Tom Stine
credit: A few days ago, a potential client wrote to me asking a few questions about how coaching and The Sedona Method would apply to his career, professional commodities trading. With his permission, I’d like to share his question with you and my response (with a few additional thoughts added).
The Question
Hi Tom
I am wondering since you are familiar with the [commodity] trading aspect [of my work], how do you deal with the difficulties of trading when you don’t take losses after you said you would and doing the opposite of what you planned to do? How does, or even does, this work help with that?
My Response
In a nutshell, if I’m following your question correctly, you are asking “how does the Sedona Method and coaching in general help with the fundamental problem of all traders: discipline.” I can’t tell you how many times I read when I was learning to trade commodities that successful traders do not pay attention to their emotions, but stick to their plan, their trading strategy. Obviously, having a way of dealing with your emotions is central to that. Here is how I see the work I do as helping:
The two emotions that are the most important with regard to trading are fear and lust (some call it greed, but the word lust is more appropriate in my view). Traders make lousy decisions when they operate from either of these two. The Sedona Method has numerous ways to approach these, but the simplest of all is to simply get in touch with them, give yourself permission to actually feel them as fully as you can, and then give yourself permission to let them go. The process is simple, quick and effective. It often takes many repetitions, but sometimes it works very quickly. You never know.
More Intuitive from Letting Go
Another benefit to doing this type of work is that one is often more intuitive the more open you become. For me personally, I feel more in sync with what is occurring around me. The markets sometimes feel more transparent. I’m not a professional trader, nor do I follow technical analysis, but I do some trading and tend to hold longer-term positions. I almost exclusive use options so I don’t have to worry about many of the problems that are inherent with futures contracts. I follow a financial writer who is quite often accurate in his ideas about the markets, but he is VERY doom and gloom. I can’t tell you how I know, but I just KNOW that we won’t see what he predicts. That’s what I mean by more intuitive.
In essence, as I have dealt with my fears and my lust/greed, the better my trading/investing has been. I still get afraid at times, but I can release through it easily. I’m less subject to hoping things will turn out okay and then being disappointed. And, I’m less subject to the lust part of the equation, which really caused me some difficulties in the distant past.
Working with Lust and Greed
The way out the lust/greed side is to recognize the inherent feeling of lacking, of craving, of wanting inside the lust. If you close your eyes and think about something you’ve really been wanting, you can feel that lusty, greedy feeling inside of it. In an of themselves, desires and wants are not really a problem, but that greedy feeling can really get in the way.
You can work with it in the same way as outlined above: first allow yourself to feel it. Then make the choice to release it, to drop it, to let it go. Finally, see if you can feel paste your prior feelings of lust and craving into the state of actually having things. You know you are there if you have a sense of completeness. It is a much better place emotionally to feel “I have” than “I want.” And it is a lot better for making good investment decisions.
I hope the above makes sense. If not, ask me for a clarification. I will be glad to help.
And the same offer goes out to all my readers. As you can see, I’m more than happy to answer questions, time permitting. If you have a question, be sure to ask.
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on March 23rd, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Tom,I enjoyed your reference to letting go. I still am working on “letting go” of some issues as it relates to inlaws “or outlaws” if you perfer. How do you once you think you’ve let it go,and it reappears again do you recognize that and truely, “let it go”?
on March 24th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Hi Mark, Letting go is a process that is mostly out of your control. All you can really ever do is keep showing up, doing whatever practice you do, and allow the spontaneous, natural process of letting go occur. And you’ll know you’ve done it when the issues that bothered you don’t seem like “issues” any more. As a matter of fact, you might go months without even thinking about it. But just keep doing it, keep doing it. Stick with your practice and letting go will occur. I’m living proof that persistence is what is required.