Dreams are one fruitful area for traders jumping into Trading Psychology.
But dreams are not only important for traders…
Throughout history, several famous people have turned to dreams to help solve their pressing problems, or found inspiration through their dreams.
- Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after dreaming it up on the Lake Geneva lakeside
- Einstein discovered his famous E = mc2 equation after a dream about riding down a mountain on a sled, approaching the speed of light
- Paul McCartney’s most famous song Yesterday came to him in a dream, he woke in the morning and played the song on a piano for his family, and asked them if it was a unique song (he didn’t want to steal anyone’s song)
- Niels Bohr couldn’t figure out the structure of the atom, until dreaming it one night
- Elias Howe invented the sewing machine after dreaming that he must invent it or be put to death by a king
- The infinite series for Pi was presented to Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematical genius, in a dream about Namakkal (a Hindu Goddess)
- Thomas Edison used to fall asleep in a chair holding onto a steel ball, once he fell asleep, he’d relax and let the ball fall to the floor, making a loud noise, and he would awake and immediately begin working on the new idea he was dreaming of at the time
Scientists have engineered ingenious studies to test the value of dreams. In one study, participants were instructed to use their dreams to find the solve this riddle: Which two English words that begin and end with HE ?
One study participant related his dream:
I get an intense pain in my chest and fall over.
Juliet, my wife, comes out of the house laughing. Her laugh is not her usual one, but is a squeaky ‘He…he…heee’… we arrive at the hospital…
A doctor comes. ‘I know what’s wrong with you’, he says… ‘I have been forbidden to discharge you’, he says, ‘until you tell me in plain language what your problem is.’
All this time behind his hand he’s laughing with a high pitched ‘He…he…heee’.
I get very angry… ‘you could call it anything, even heartache’ I say.
He stops laughing ‘You can go home now’…
‘I’m not quite better’, I tell him…
I leave the hospital and (the dream scientist) appear(s)…. ‘I told you there were two things wrong with you’ Morton says…
‘Riddles give me headaches’, I tell him.
This guy magically dreamt up with 3 solutions to the riddle: “heartache” and “headache” (the experimenters were looking for these solutions) and the additional, unanticipated solution “he” – as it begins, and ends, with “HE.”
It’s almost difficult to believe that this participant in the study came up with more solutions to the riddle than the experimenters were aware of… and he did this in his dream.
Dreams are funny, they often offer you solutions to life’s problems, you simply have to pay attention to them. If you have recurring problems, or keep making the same mistakes with your trading, dreams can help you. This is an important part of the Trading Psychology course – You Get What You Trade For.
So, here’s how dreams can help you and your trading.
First, you must harness the power of your dreams. Many people claim “I don’t dream” or “I never remember my dreams..”
Everybody dreams, and here’s how you will remember them:
- Before You Sleep: As a new habit, keep a notepad and pen next to your bed. Every night before going to sleep, write down what happened during the day. Write about whatever you think was important, it doesn’t matter what it is, just write what comes to mind.
- When You Awake: Start writing what you remember. If you don’t remember anything, just write “I don’t remember any of the dreams I had last night.”
If you keep up this habit, you will find that in the morning, you will begin to recall more and more of your (up to 9) dreams you have each night.
In the Part 2, I will show you how you can control your dreams and why this is critical for you to overcome trading problems (and other issues in your life).
4 comments
Hi
Im definitely strating with this. I’m just curious because of your Psychological vantage point in trading. I must see how this will connect to trading.
Hi Duncan
The key is to look for themes, and avoid those “dream interpretation dictionaries” – they are rubbish. What matters is what the symbols and themes in your dreams mean to you. That’s the critical piece.
How do you feel after recording the dream?
Is there a connection between what you wrote before going to sleep and what your dream(s) involved?
It may take time to “figure out” the meaning, but it will be worth it. Remember, even Einstein had to meditate on his dream before he came up with E = mc2 ….
Happy Dreaming!
Can’t explain it…but putting my dreams to pen and paper is somehow making a connection to my core beliefs. Thanks Walter.
Hi Billy!
What will typically happen is you make connections between the recurring themes in your dreams and the recurring mistakes in your trading. Many of these will become obvious after you record the same sort of theme in your journal.
For example, if you keep dreaming of being sold off as a slave for a pittance, you might have a subconscious belief related to not being “worth much” and therefore not worthy of winning in the markets.
This is a simple example, but you get the idea.
I hope this post and the You Get What You Trade For Trading Psychology course helps, Billy!
Thanks for your post.
Happy Trading!