How often have you seen something that upon closer examination turned out to be something very different? Or, have you ever looked at the price action and acted upon what seemed to be a perfect price pattern; then wrote your plan, executed the plan, and summarily were stopped out; only to go back to what you thought was the price pattern that now looked entirely different?! It was like a dream. What you perceived was predicated upon how you “filter” information. You interpreted what you saw through mental models of how the world appears to be. In other words, what you “see” and interpret as reality is created by internal working “models” in your mind. Mental models of the world are formed in your earliest years of development and continue to expand throughout years of living. These mental models or paradigms are built around everything that you have learned and make up the conscious and unconscious beliefs that motivate you to both good and bad behaviors. Additionally, these mental models or programming also involve how you perceive the world; in other words, the lenses we use to “filter” information. There are as many ways to filter data coming into the brain/mind for processing as there are people on the face of the planet. And, it’s important to understand some of the more general ways that filters work. In this way, you will be able to promote changing what you do through how you do it. If you are getting results that you don’t want then you must change something. But, it is very difficult to change in the “right” direction, if you aren’t clear about objectives and the direction to begin with. Doing things differently as a result of seeing and experiencing things differently is what we are talking about and this is the beginning of making changes in your trading in order to get better results.
Let’s look at some of them:
Associated/Disassociated Filters
Associated filters are distinguished by your perception of an event and imagining it from being “in” your body. Think about one of your most recent trades. If you are able to experience it again by hearing the sounds through your ears, seeing the charts through your eyes, and touching the keys of your computer with your fingers, you are filtering the event in an associated way. If on the other hand you saw yourself as though you were an outside observer and experienced yourself as if in a movie, then you are dissociated.
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