VISUALISATION, PERFORMANCE CUES AND FOCUSING

Communication starts with senses, as Aldous Huxley pointed out, the doors of perception are the senses, our eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and skin, and these are our only points of contact with the world. Our senses see through a complex series of active perceptual filters.

The world we perceive is not the real world but a map made by our neurology. What we pay attention to in the map is further filtered through our beliefs, interests, and preoccupations.

Due to the design of our neurology we can learn to allow our senses to serve us better. The ability to notice more, and make finer distinctions in all the senses can significantly enrich the quality of your life.

When we think about what we see, hear, and feel, we recreate these sights, sounds, and feelings inwardly, thus we are re-experiencing the information in the sensory form in which we first perceived it, sometimes we are aware of this process and sometimes we are not.

1. Sit down in a comfortable position and relax your body entirely from head to toe;
2. Close your eyes, and pay specific attention on your breathing;
3. Visualise yourself sat at your trading desk, watching the price action on the monitor with your hand on the mouse beside you;
4. Now imagine yourself placing a buy order into the market, as well as your stop loss just below. Feel yourself waiting patiently for the market to trade at your price, remaining calm, controlled and disciplined;
5. See your order get filled, and pay attention to your breathing as you watch the market begin to stabilise – then begin to slowly move upwards;
6. Watch the market continue to rise higher and higher until your profit target is reached. Again, feel your hand on the mouse as you bring the cursor over your exit price, before clicking with your finger to exit the trade at a good profit;
7. Now relax, and pay attention to the feeling that this imagined experience generates. What does it feel like? Where do you feel it? How are you breathing?

The purpose of this exercise, and others like it, is to use your conscious mind to establish new habits and images in the subconscious mind which will help you to do what you should be doing during your trading automatically without even thinking. Numerous studies have shown that most habits usually take approximately 21 days to become well-established. Though, you can change your habits in the blink of an eye – it simply depends on how effectively you learn to use the power of your imagination.

Remember the term – VAKOG!