• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

Change Your Environment, Change Yourself

March 20, 2009 by Brett Steenbarger, Ph.D.

(Edi­tor’s note: one of the most com­mon ene­mies of get­ting qual­i­ty cog­ni­tive exer­cise is being on The Daily Trading Coach, by Brett Steenbarger“men­tal autopi­lot”. I recent­ly came across an excel­lent new book, titled The Dai­ly Trad­ing Coach: 101 Lessons for Becom­ing Your Own Trad­ing Psy­chol­o­gist, by trad­ing per­for­mance expert Dr. Brett Steen­barg­er, which explic­it­ly calls for address­ing the “men­tal autopi­lot” prob­lem in his Les­son 4. Even for those of us who are not traders, Dr. Steen­barg­er advice pro­vides excel­lent guid­ance for peak cog­ni­tive per­for­mance. Dr. Steen­barg­er gra­cious­ly gave us per­mis­sion to share with you, below, Les­son 4: Change Your Envi­ron­ment, Change Your­self. Enjoy!).

Human beings adapt to their envi­ron­ments. We draw on a range of skills and per­son­al­i­ty traits to fit into var­i­ous set­tings. That is why we can behave one way in a social set­ting and then seem like a total­ly dif­fer­ent human being at work. One of the endur­ing attrac­tions of trav­el is that it takes us out of our native envi­ron­ments and forces us to adapt to new peo­ple, new cul­tures, and new ways. When we make those adap­ta­tions, we dis­cov­er new facets of our­selves. As we’ll see short­ly, dis­crep­an­cy is the moth­er of all change: when we are in the same envi­ron­ments, we tend to draw upon the same, rou­tine modes of thought and behavior.

A few months ago I had an attack of acute appen­dici­tis while stay­ing in a LaGuardia air­port hotel await­ing a return flight to Chica­go. When I went to the near­est emer­gency room at Elmhurst Hos­pi­tal out­side Jack­son Heights, Queens, I found that I was seem­ing­ly the only native Eng­lish speak­er in a sea of peo­ple await­ing med­ical care. After some dif­fi­cul­ty attract­ing atten­tion, I was admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal and spent the next sev­er­al days of recu­per­a­tion nav­i­gat­ing my way through patients and staff of every con­ceiv­able nation­al­i­ty. By the end of the expe­ri­ence, I felt at home there. I’ve since stayed at the same air­port hotel and rou­tine­ly make vis­its into the sur­round­ing neighborhoods—areas I would have nev­er in my wildest dreams ven­tured into pre­vi­ous­ly. In adapt­ing to that envi­ron­ment, I dis­cov­ered hid­den strengths. I also over­came more than a few hid­den prej­u­dices and fears.

The great­est ene­my of change is rou­tine. When we lapse into rou­tine and oper­ate on autopi­lot, we are no longer ful­ly and active­ly con­scious of what we’re doing and why. That is why some of the most fer­tile sit­u­a­tions for per­son­al growth—those that occur with­in new environments—are those that force us to exit our rou­tines and active­ly mas­ter unfa­mil­iar challenges.

In famil­iar envi­ron­ments and rou­tines, we oper­ate on autopi­lot. Noth­ing changes.

When you act as your own trad­ing coach, your chal­lenge is to stay ful­ly con­scious, alert to risk and oppor­tu­ni­ty. One of your great­est threats will be the autopi­lot mode in which you act with­out think­ing, with­out full aware­ness of your sit­u­a­tion. If you shift your trad­ing envi­ron­ment, you push your­self to adapt to new sit­u­a­tions: you break rou­tines. If your envi­ron­ment is always the same, you will find your­self grav­i­tat­ing to the same thoughts, feel­ings, and behav­iors. We are mired in repet­i­tive pat­terns of thought and behav­ior because we are mired in rou­tines: the same emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal envi­ron­ments. Indeed, we repeat the same patterns—for bet­ter or for worse—precisely because those pat­terns are adap­ta­tions to our cur­rent settings.

So how can we change our trad­ing envi­ron­ments? The key is rec­og­niz­ing that our phys­i­cal set­tings are only a part of our sur­round­ings. Here are a few rou­tine-bust­ing activ­i­ties that can alert us to risks and possibilities:

1. Seek Out Diver­gent Views. Con­ver­sa­tions with traders who trade dif­fer­ent­ly from you—different time frames, mar­kets, or styles—can often help cement your views or ques­tion them. Sim­i­lar­ly, read­ing mate­ri­als from fresh per­spec­tives puts your ideas in a dif­fer­ent light and push­es you to ques­tion your assump­tions. I remained rel­a­tive­ly bull­ish on the stock market’s longer-term pic­ture into the final quar­ter of 2007. Only when I pushed myself to read informed views that clashed with my own—and con­sult­ing data that did not fit my framework—did I mod­i­fy my per­spec­tives and avoid sig­nif­i­cant losses.

2. Exam­ine the Big Pic­ture. It’s easy to get lost in the market’s short-term pic­ture; how it is trad­ing that minute, that day. I find it impor­tant to peri­od­i­cal­ly zoom out to longer-term charts and place the cur­rent action into con­text. Indeed, some of the best trad­ing ideas start with a big pic­ture view and then pro­ceed to short­er-term exe­cu­tion. I espe­cial­ly find this to be the case when look­ing at longer-term support/resistance, trad­ing ranges, and Mar­ket Pro­file val­ue areas. Often, shift­ing my field of vision will help me avoid an ill-informed, reac­tive trade based on the market’s last few ticks. If some­thing seems obvi­ous in the mar­ket, switch time frames and gen­er­ate an entire­ly new per­spec­tive. What looks obvi­ous from one view may well be obvi­ous­ly wrong from another.

3. Exam­ine Relat­ed Views. Some­times the action of a sin­gle stock or sec­tor will illu­mi­nate what’s hap­pen­ing in the broad­er mar­ket; one cur­ren­cy cross will break out ahead of oth­ers. Are we see­ing a broad fixed income ral­ly, or is the yield curve steep­en­ing or flat­ten­ing? Look­ing across instru­ments and asset class­es keeps us from get­ting locked into ways of think­ing. I find myself track­ing sec­tor ETFs dur­ing the trad­ing day to see if stocks are mov­ing in a sin­gle direc­tion (trend­ing) or are tak­ing dif­fer­ent paths with­in a range. If I see bond traders flee­ing to safe­ty or assum­ing risk, I can antic­i­pate sell­ing or buy­ing stocks. See­ing the entire finan­cial play­ing field helps keep us from becom­ing wed­ded to pre­con­ceived ideas.

4. Take the Break. Just as we take vaca­tions to return to work refreshed, a break from the screen can help us gen­er­ate fresh mar­ket views. It is easy to become focused on what is most dra­mat­ic and salient in mar­kets. Pull back and clear out the head to help you see what’s not obvi­ous and then prof­it by the time it’s rec­og­nized by oth­ers. I find breaks espe­cial­ly help­ful fol­low­ing los­ing trades, enabling us to reflect on the loss­es and what can be learned from them.

If your envi­ron­ment is com­fort­able, it prob­a­bly isn’t con­ducive to change.

In short, it’s the men­tal routines—the men­tal environment—that we most need to change to break unwant­ed and unprof­itable pat­terns of thought and behav­ior. When you’re your own trad­ing coach, you learn to think, but also to think about your think­ing. Incor­po­rate a fresh look at self and mar­kets each day to inspire new ideas, chal­lenge stale ones, and tap sources of ener­gy and inspi­ra­tion that oth­er­wise remain hid­den in rou­tine. As with my adven­ture in Queens, you may find that the most exot­ic changes bring out your finest adaptations.

C O A C H I N G  C U E:

Many times it’s the mar­ket views we most scorn that we need to take most seri­ous­ly, because at some lev­el we’re find­ing them threat­en­ing. Seek out com­men­tary from those you most dis­agree with and ask your­self what you would be see­ing in the mar­kets if that com­men­tary proves to be cor­rect. If you’re quick to dis­miss a mar­ket view, give it a sec­ond look. You wouldn’t need to be so defen­sive if you didn’t sense some­thing plausible—and dangerous—in the views you’re dismissing.

Brett Steenbarger– Brett Steen­barg­er, Ph.D. is Clin­i­cal Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at SUNY Upstate Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty in Syra­cuse, and the author of The Psy­chol­o­gy of Trad­ing (Wiley, 2003) and Enhanc­ing Trad­er Per­for­mance (Wiley, 2006). His lat­est book is The Dai­ly Trad­ing Coach: 101 Lessons for Becom­ing Your Own Trad­ing Psy­chol­o­gist. A coach of traders and port­fo­lio man­agers at hedge funds, banks, and pro­pri­etary trad­ing firms, Dr. Steen­barg­er blogs at TraderFeed.com

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance Tagged With: autopilot, behavior, big-picture, change, change-environment, change-yourself, cognitive-exercise, cognitive-performance, conscious, Divergent-Views, environment, mental-autopilot, mental-environment, mental-routines, routine, thought, traders, trading, trading-coach, Trading-psychology

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. RaiulBaztepo says

    March 28, 2009 at 5:03

    Hel­lo!
    Very Inter­est­ing post! Thank you for such inter­est­ing resource!
    PS: Sor­ry for my bad eng­lish, I’v just start­ed to learn this language 😉
    See you!
    Your, Raiul Baztepo

  2. Victoria Bañales says

    April 1, 2009 at 7:12

    I’ve lived and worked in five coun­tries on three con­ti­nents and have moved over 13 times in the last 20 years. Talk about “change your envi­ron­ment, change yourself”!!

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 12,558 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2023 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy