“If I don’t make you cry, you get your money back.”
This is a facetious guarantee that I joke with traders about at the start of 1-1 consulting to break the ice. I’m only half-joking. It’s not uncommon that a trader I’m working with on a 1-1 basis will cry at some point in our work together.
This isn’t a boast. Or an attempt to position myself as a therapist for traders. I’m most definitely not that. It’s my way of conveying the true nature of the work involved in developing consistent execution as a trader. If you’re not excavating the depths of your psyche on the journey to performance enhancement, you’re probably leaving something on the table.
There is a reason why seasoned, highly intelligent, and analytical traders continue to struggle with trading plan violations. Logic says that if you know exactly what you should be doing in the market to make money, then you should have no problem executing on that plan. Reality begs to differ.
The discrepancy between knowing and doing is where millions of dollars are lost in the market every year. The magnitude of those losses gets amplified by the level a trader is playing at. For an early-stage independent retail trader, trading plan violations might be the difference between ending the year at breakeven, and ending it with a decent amount of profit to show for the year’s work. For a professional prop firm trader, that difference can equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even their place on the desk.
So, what’s the explanation for this illogical phenomenon that plagues traders at every experience level? The subconscious mind. The same pressure point that triggers deep recognition and tears in 1-1 sessions is also the key to unlocking inconsistent execution.
Your Internal Operating System
Way back in the early 1990s, the Apple Mac ran on a System 7 operating system. State of the art for its time. Capable of supporting software that could plot simple line or bar charts for a handful of assets. Fast forward to today and imagine that your new Mac desktop computer is still running on the same software, but trying to execute a task like scanning global news sentiment, while simultaneously backtesting millions of historical permutations. It wouldn’t be fit for purpose. What worked perfectly for trading in 1991 would fall dismally short applied to 2026 tasks. That’s essentially what the majority of traders are doing when they rely on outdated subconscious programming to support consistent execution of their trading plan.
Your subconscious (or unconscious) mind is the part of your mind that’s outside the level of your conscious awareness. This is where your deeper beliefs about yourself and the world sit. These beliefs are often formed in childhood under the influence of your caregivers and home environment, and surreptitiously inform your thinking and behaviour across every aspect of your life. The beliefs include everything from your relationship with money and your values and morals, to your perception of what you need to do to be safe in the world and to receive love and approval.
The problem is that the subconscious mind isn’t objective. It has good intentions. It does its best to make sense of the world and to help you adapt to challenging circumstances. The child whose parents only ever vocalise praise or affection when the child is achieving something develops the belief that “I need to earn love and approval through achievement”. The child who grows up in an unpredictable family environment and perceives uncertainty as a threat develops the belief that “I’m only safe when I’m in control”.
As that child grows into an adult, unless a compelling trigger prompts them to assess the usefulness of their beliefs, they tend to continue using the same internal operating system to navigate life. When the lens never changes, life events only serve to further reinforce the belief. The teenager continues to win more accolades and approval which reinforces the link between external validation and their sense of self-worth. The twenty-year-old becomes hyper-organised and responsible and ascends up the career ladder, rewarded for their perfectionism. The problem begins when your life goals evolve past what your existing schema can support (i.e., when you decide to forge a career as a trader).
Trading Demands Personal Evolution
The trading arena is brutal and unforgiving. It acts as a direct mirror to your limiting beliefs. Too many traders who are suffering from trading plan violations focus on the behaviour itself, the act of breaking their trading rules, rather than the internal wiring that is driving the indiscipline. They seek to increase their willpower, better define their rules, or neutralize emotions like fear, greed, or FOMO, instead of exploring the root of the issue — the subconscious programming that predisposes you to acting or reacting in a specific, undesirable way.
Take the child who has learned to equate achievement with love and approval. To that person, a losing trade isn’t just a loss of money, but a direct blow to their sense of self-worth and their ability to earn love. By virtue of the subconscious interpretation, what reads as a financial threat on paper is perceived as an existential one by the trader.
Or take the trader who needs to be in control to feel safe. The uncertainty inherent in the market is like a daily survival threat to their nervous system. Of course it’s understandable why that person is micro-managing their trade and conservatively moving stops — they’re prioritising staying safe over sticking to their trading plan. None of this is typically happening in a way that traders are consciously aware of as they sit in front of the computer screen. That’s what makes it so tricky to recognise.
When your subconscious programming isn’t aligned with your trading goals, the nature of the battle itself changes. You’re no longer trading. You’re in a fight to meet your most basic needs and the market just happens to be the arena that battle is playing out in.
This is why no amount of redefining rules, drumming up additional willpower, or breathing your way through highly charged emotions is sufficient by itself to achieve consistent execution of your trading plan. It may not be the only solution required, but uncovering and addressing your subconscious beliefs is non-negotiable for consistency in your trading.
This Isn’t Therapy
When I talk about traders tearing up on Zoom calls, I’m not talking about reliving painful memories in an attempt to heal trauma. I’m talking about the reaction of a trader when they finally hit the nail on the head as to why they haven’t been able to stay disciplined and consistent in their trading execution. The plain and now obvious connection between their childhood or life experiences, their beliefs, and their actions in the market can be articulated in a single sentence. The tears are usually an expression of a moment of sudden understanding where the pattern clicks and the relief floods in. Once the understanding is there, rewiring the subconscious beliefs is a matter of mental conditioning.
The process that I work through with traders to decode this pattern is straightforward. If we’re working together in 1-1 consulting, we can usually achieve this level of awareness through a focused, deep discussion, and occasionally through live guided visualisation. For traders who take my self-directed mental conditioning protocol, the same understanding can be achieved by working through a sequence of structured questions.
In therapy, the goal is to directly heal the trauma elicited by life events. This can often be a lengthy journey that necessitates subtle unravelling of layers and requires ongoing support over time. In trading performance consulting, we’re only seeking to identify what specific pattern is playing out in the market so that we can change behaviours. We aim to reach an insight that can be articulated in one sentence, and then plugged into a mental conditioning protocol that can rewire the pattern over time. The upfront work may be daunting or uncomfortable for someone who isn’t used to deep self-reflection, but it’s finite and has a clear end goal.
The Depth of the Work Should Reflect the Height of Your Ambition
Does this mean you’re not going to make money unless you force a cathartic epiphany out of your subconscious mind? No. But if you’re trading at the level of a serious professional, whether that’s as an independent trader or employed by a firm, then I would stand by the assertion that some exploration of your subconscious patterns is unavoidable. At the highest levels of performance, even 1% improvements can make a material difference to the bottom line. An afternoon sitting with the discomfort of self-reflection is a nominal cost compared to a career spent repeating the same trading plan violations.
If this post resonated, subscribe to Backing Yourself for more insights on the psychology of consistent trading execution. And if you’re ready to move from understanding your execution patterns, to actually changing how you execute your trades under pressure, my Go Deep to Level Up® mental conditioning protocol is the next step.