Why Trading Can Lead to Enlightenment

On my call with Fred today he said "I can't believe how it all comes together like that" and then we sat in silence for 10 minutes as we savoured the moment.

That was 10 minutes which Fred (not his real name) had paid his well earned money to spend with me, a trading psychology coach. But the power of the moment was worth it.

Enlightenment, according to the Zen notion of Satori, is the closing of the gap between us and ultimate reality. From my own experience, and from guidance from Sanji Vana, a senior Buddhist Monk, ultimate reality is the reality that remains when all other forms of reality that we normally associate with the world, physical and mental, disappear. And when you touch it, it is intense, real and blissful.

Back to trading, most traders come to me with various forms of fear and lack of discipline which affect their trading directly. Initially I might use some fast techniques such as NLP to get quick results. But for long lasting impact, what we really need to do is to go to the deeper levels, to uncover what the underlying fear really is.

For example, using the 5 step process in the best trading psychology book, Jo (not her real name) saw that her hallucinations of trading patterns towards the end of each month was actually related to fear of failure and more specifically around some incidents with her mother as a child. Once we could see that and realise that those events were not relevant to today's trading, her fear of failure lifted and her trading improved. Beyond that her business improved and her general wellbeing got much better.

So while tricks to help trading mindset can help in the short term, it is through deeper work that you get more permanent results. But more than that you work at the level of your core being and with each fear you can look past, you are actually looking past your ego and catching wider glimpses of your true nature. So the more you work on your trading fears, the more you can look past your ego and the more you are in touch with your true nature.

And it is your true nature that is connected to the ultimate reality, is in fact part of ultimate reality. The more you are in contact with your ultimate reality , the more you are in contact with enlightenment and that is how trading can lead to enlightenment.