One of the things that I do to reduce and manage stress is to exercise about 5 to 6 times per week. It not only lowers stress and promotes the release of endorphins that help me to feel good, it also supports clear thinking and optimal health. Well, the other day, I was listening to a trainer work with his clients and he told them something that made enormous sense. He said that even though you have a number of repetitions for each exercise which is essentially a goal; what is even more supportive is to “make your goal intentional and think about stretching that goal a little each and every exercise.” So, rather than just knocking off your set as you usually do, be deliberate and focus on the achievement of that “stretch” goal. I tried it and it made a big difference in my workouts…a little more challenging but also more rewarding. So often goals are set and then just as quickly forgotten. We lose site of the fact that a goal is not just a destination it is a tool.

 Most people are familiar with the importance and power of goals. But, then again, are they? Goals have been written about in more books than can be counted. With all these missives on goals, why is it that they are so over-talked about and under used? Let’s begin with some definitions of the word goal: a goal is an aim, a target, an objective; the end to which a design tends, or which a person aims to reach or attain (Webster’s Dictionary).   So, essentially, a goal is where you want to end up in any particular endeavor. It is the result that you seek and the outcome that you desire. In this regard, some think that goals are only to be identified when you want something “important” or “large”. However, setting and reaching goals is a skill, and like anything else that requires skill you’ve got to practice them. Not to mention, consistent targeting and hitting of small goals is like taking consistent small steps … if you keep going you’ll reach any destination – even around the world. Herein lies the argument for having goals for everything; i.e. anything about which you’d like to have a positive experience. This would necessarily mean goals for eating, exercising, sleeping, conversing, selling, working, and playing.

Now, many readers may have a somewhat negative reaction to this plethora of goals; but if you take a look at people who are most productive and happy, they will tell you that they live their life by design…not by default. What does that mean? It means that you are self-aware of your thoughts, emotions and actions. Self-aware and living by design means that you are intentional about the results and the outcomes in your life. Living by design also means that you remain focused on what matters most in what you are doing and why you are doing it – and that includes the seeming mundane. Living by default means that you are governed by the old programmed patterns. As Stephen Covey writes in “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” begin with the end in mind. That refers to whatever you’re doing. In other words, if it’s important enough to do, it’s important enough to do it in intentional awareness.

How are you framing your result process? In other words, what are you focusing on as you are preparing, processing and creating your trade plan? Is it something like… “Where is this going and will the plan work out?” Or, perhaps it’s worse… “I just can’t seem to get this right; why do I always lose?” This type of thinking begins to spiral downward to the point of becoming out-of-control and it definitely can destroy your results by causing you to take your focus off what matters most. When the results do come they quite often are exactly what you were afraid of – more losses caused by something that you didn’t do that you should have done, or something that you did that you shouldn’t have done.

It’s so easy to get caught in problem oriented thinking; you can become consumed by what you don’t want. The goal-achiever becomes immersed in the issue(s) rather than focused on what you truly want; i.e., to keep your commitments to achieving your goal. In those instances, most know what to do, but they become caught in a self-imposed straight jacket made of their own thinking. Preoccupation with what you don’t want keeps your energy, your resources and your emotional attention on the undesirable condition. In other words, your energy flows where your attention goes; and more times than not you end up with what you don’t want.

It’s important to know what you really want and make it a focus of your actions.   Achievers understand the power of knowing what they want and envisioning that specifically and clearly. It is a matter of having a compelling set of goals that stem from a compelling reason for those goals. There is a pattern to this thinking, which is focused on the goals. Additionally, achievers are often unaware of this process. It is an outgrowth of the hunger, the intensity and the passion with which they desire what they want. This type of focus acts like a turbo charger catapulting them into the desired results. This is “results oriented” thinking. Your eyes should always be on the prize.

Being results oriented means envisioning what you really want as if you stepped in the future and got it. In the words of Steven Covey, this “towards thinking” is “beginning with the end in mind.” Moving toward your goals creates focus by increasing the energy around the desired condition. If you program yourself to think about being calm or getting things right, you are dramatically increasing the chances that this is how you will be. Achievers have mastered self-programming. It doesn’t mean that they are not challenged or that things aren’t difficult; but, they use these situations as opportunities to ramp up their focus on the important things in their lives. They have modeled themselves on excellence.   Results oriented thinking is about identifying what galvanizes your focus and your passion.

Past/Present/ Future Filters
Some people have a penchant for the past. Some people are enamored with back testing, and many will tell you that back testing will only tell you what the price action did in the past under those circumstances. Others prefer to be in the present, the only time frame in which you can live. Also, there are those that live in the future. For instance, questions like: What’s for dinner? How long until we get home? What’s next on the agenda? All of these examples focus on the future. They all present a filter for how you communicate with yourself regarding what you see and how you process the information.

Towards/Away From Filters
If you have a goal it’s important to be aware of how you are thinking about the goal. Are you envisioning what it would be like to have the goal (how it feels, looks, smells, tastes, and sounds)? Or, are you overwhelmed by all the ways that it might fail and haunted by what that failure will feel, look, smell, taste and sound like? This is a very important filter to be aware of. A towards filter engages your subconscious, especially if it is in a sensory rich fashion, and the subconscious relates to it as though it were real. Those who have this filter are much more likely to attract and achieve their goal. Those who think of what they don’t want are more likely to attract or achieve just that. This is especially important when putting your purpose, mission, goals, and profit objectives together. Remember, in the words of comic Flip Wilson “What you see is what you get.”

The important thing here is to become aware of your filters and when appropriate to deliberately and by design use those filters to more easily direct you to the results you want. Here is an example of how to use filters to help you: Identify your goals and make them time specific, detailed, results oriented and measureable. Next use a “towards” filter to catapult you in the direction of the goal with focused intention. Then associate, that is, float down into the body of your future and see, hear, and feel through your body’s senses what it will be like to experience achieving that result (this is done in preparation for a challenging task and is different from being caught up in the future). This is living by design and not by default. Take control of your life one event, one tool and one deliberate action at a time.

We teach these and many other powerful, fast acting and highly effective tools, techniques and concepts in our coaching program. Also, get my book, “From Pain to Profit: Secrets of the Peak Performance Trader.”

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 life. These mental models or paradigms are built around everything that you have learned and make up the conscious and unconscious beliefs (and biases) 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 you use to “filter” information. There are as many ways for your mind to filter data as there are people on 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 see it. Doing things differently as a result of seeing and experiencing things differently constitutes the beginning of making changes in your life to get different results.

Let’s look at some of them:

Associated/Disassociated Filters
Associated filters are your perceptions of an event and looking at it from “inside” your body. As an example, think about sitting by your computer… You are able to hear the sounds through your ears, see the screen through your eyes, touch the keys of your computer with your fingers, and feel the emotions again that you felt at the time. You are then filtering the event in an associated way. You are in your body. 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.

Take a moment to think about your room as you are in it. Notice the placement of the furniture, your computer and other tools. Also, notice the colors and lighting. As you become more aware of the space, notice any sounds, are they loud, soft, pleasant, or annoying. Become aware of your body, feel its textures and pressure, sense the parts of you that are touching the furniture or the ground, feel the temperature of the room. Is it warm or chilled? Notice smells or tastes; perhaps you eat lunch or a snack at your desk from time to time. Pay attention to any emotions, tensions, excitement, etc. and to the location in your body. What you are doing is experiencing an associated state.

Now, step back and view the same scene as though you were someone else looking at you. See yourself in your office and notice everything “external” to your body… sounds and sights. See the whole you and be aware of how the “whole” you looks. This is a dissociated state. It is detached from your inner experience. Why is this important? The ability to associate or dissociate is a fundamental skill, with each state offering different benefits in order to experience feelings, emotions, and events as though you were experiencing them again; or to distance yourself from unpleasant, or traumatic situations and reduce the emotional content.

Negative events of your past can sap your strength and compromise your resolve. It is not only helpful but empowering to be able to dissociate and distance yourself from these events. Additionally, you can manipulate the filter by increasing the distance of the picture in your head through increasing or decreasing what you see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and touch. It is extremely important to helping reduce the intensity of old, nagging traumas and memories that can significantly take away from your discipline and focus. On the other hand, uplifting and intensely positive visions of the future can support your outcomes by associating into and feeling, touching, tasting, smelling and seeing what it will be like when it is achieved. And here’s another important point: with regard to stress and trauma, those people that relive memories in an associated way add to their stress, and experience longer lasting and more concentrated emotions because they experience the event as though it were happening all over again. Those with the lowest levels of stress are able to dissociate and detach from painful events.

Make sure to check in tomorrow to read and learn about two additional filters that will help you reach your goals in a more effective way.

Modeling is an extremely proficient strategy for pursuing success in any performance-oriented endeavor. As the saying goes, if someone can do it, anyone can learn it. Modeling is a state of curiosity and selflessness. It is a desire to listen to, watch, respect, and learn from others as well as yourself. Modeling is an interest in process over content. Process or the “how” something is done is arguably more important than content or the “what.” The process is where skill is focused to create the end result. There are countless ways to do anything, but there are ways that are extremely effective and there are time-and-energy wasters that might get you to a similar result – sort of like getting close to the target but still far from the bullseye. Modeling can take many forms. Some of your most fundamental skills have been acquired through modeling others. Babies and young children are expert modelers. Only when they start learning by more traditional methods do they begin to lose this skill.

You can model anything as you identify the mastery in someone who does well the thing that you want to capture; for instance:

• Motivation to keep your personal commitments
• Influence
• Achieving a personal best
• Listening
• Networking

With conscious awareness you have a choice to do something differently.

Applying the process to self we can see that the strategy is reproducing an ability or skill that you have in another area of life, in order to use it in other contexts. For instance, you may be methodical, self-assured and cautious in another part of your life, but highly anxious, impulsive and unpredictable when it comes to reaching your goal. Uncovering the strategies involves observing personal program(s) that are sequences of mental and behavioral codes. For instance, how you do what you do when you walk, talk, drive, read, or laugh. Normally we don’t think of how we do these things, but they constitute a code of behavior that has been established. The programs that make them happen are managed on your behalf by your unconscious mind. These are known as strategies. When you have the strategy for how someone manages his or her experience, you have the key to reproducing that experience for yourself. Often you will hear a successful person share that they have a consistent pattern for selflessness—a notion of giving back, which reminds them that they are a part of a larger community and that this perspective helps them remain grounded in the face of greed. Secondly, they have a larger reason or purpose that illustrates why they desire to be successful, one that is not money driven. They have a skill in using metaphor and visionary thinking. Winners are able to create a sensory rich vision of success that creates a subconscious passion for remaining focused on what matters most; that is, keeping rules, and following their plan. They also have a dedication to sequential and purpose-driven protocols, i.e. the development of effective routines that give way to the development of strong habits leading to skill-building around rule based methods of success. So, identify what you want to excel in and find someone who is successful doing it to model.