target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#i000001450000.jpg" alt="dot"/>The key finding from the sine wave exercise with Chris and Gina was the near-absence of peak experiences in recent years. It wasn't the presence of great negatives but the absence of positives that eroded their marriage. They were so busy climbing the family ladder that they couldn't see they were leaning against the wrong building.
So how does a psychologist help a couple like Chris and Gina? The one thing that isn't helpful is focusing on their problems. Both husband and wife already feel as though something is wrong with their marriage. They secretly – and sometimes not so secretly – harbor concerns that something is wrong with them. They know something is broken; more talk of breakage only confirms the negative identity that they have internalized in recent years as a couple. As a rule, by the time people come to a psychologist, they have gotten to the point of experiencing themselves as troubled. Feeling beset with problems and unable to control or change those problems, couples come to counseling in a disempowered state. Spending hour after hour with a therapist, delving into problems, subtly reinforces the notion of “troubled” and often unwittingly contributes to the initial disempowerment.
Empowering people through a focus on strengths is a cardinal tenet of the solution-focused approach to change described in The Psychology of Trading. When we are focused on problems and overwhelmed by them, we typically fail to appreciate the fact that there are numerous occasions in which the problems don't play out. These exceptions to problem patterns typically hold the kernel of solution: It's what we are doing when problems don't occur that can point the way out.
Key Takeaway
We cannot improve our functioning if we experience ourselves as dysfunctional.
Notice the subtle shift: The troubled person tells the psychologist about overwhelming problems and the psychologist responds by asking about exceptions to those problems – and then by pointing out that the kernel of solution has resided within the person all along! You see, if the solution came from the psychologist, troubled individuals would feel that they have a powerful therapist, not that they are powerful. Solution-focused work succeeds in large part because it reconnects people with their adaptive capacities: the parts of themselves that are not troubled and dysfunctional.
So the last thing we'd want to do with Chris and Gina is spend the majority of our time talking about what has been going wrong. But we don't have peak experiences on the sine-wave chart to serve as exceptions to their problem patterns. Indeed, their very problem – their deadly immersion in routine – is the absence of peak experience. How to proceed?
The answer, as I alluded earlier, is to create a bridge between present and future. What's the one thing holding the couple together? Their love for and commitment to their children. Will they work on their marriage if that would feel like taking time away from the kids? Of course not. Without a bridge, they remain stuck in the present: They won't trade a known priority for an uncertain one. So we need a way to pursue the future while holding onto present commitments. We are most likely to change if our efforts feel evolutionary, not revolutionary.
I turned the conversation with the couple toward the absence of positives between them and how they thought that the absence affected their children. “What are you role-modeling?” I pointedly asked Gina and Chris. “If the children don't see you having fun, loving each other – being special to each other – what does that teach them about relationships? What kind of relationships would that influence them to seek out?”
I could see that the couple had never contemplated this. I wasn't telling them that they needed to have good times together to be a happy couple. Rather, I suggested that the relationship they had with each other would create a template for their children's relationship expectations. To truly be good parents for their older children, they needed to role model being a good couple. What they would do to enhance and sustain their marriage was one and the same with what they needed to do to role model the next phase of their children's development.
“Of course,” I suggested gently, “if you genuinely don't feel positive things for each other, there's no sense creating a pretense for the kids. You'd probably be better off splitting up and finding good relationships that the children could come to appreciate and internalize.”
Well, that was the last thing Chris and Gina wanted to hear! They could contemplate being in a marriage that wasn't working, but not working as parents? Never! The bridge was clear: The new definition of being a good parent now included being a good spouse. Their mandate was to pave the way for their children's next phase of development, not blindly repeat the parenting of the past.
So we began looking for those exception situations in which Gina and Chris were already role-modeling good things in their marriage: caring, trust, cooperation, and communication. Clearly there were a number of positives; the conversation picked up. There were no awkward interruptions. It was Gina who hit on the idea of bringing the children to see their grandparents and using the occasion to take an overnight trip as a couple. It would be family time and romantic time. Chris loved the idea and the two of them became animated as they planned their overnight excursion. I suggested that the energy they were displaying with each other in my office would not be lost on the children. If parents are excited and in love with each other, the home environment feels exciting and loving. What more could a parent bequeath a child?
This made huge sense for Chris and Gina.
Chris had come from a troubled, alcoholic family.
Gina had been sexually abused as a child.
They found each other and vowed that they would never hurt their children the way they were hurt. They would never take their issues out on their children.
Only when romantic love felt like part of their family commitment could they find a bridge to their future. They weren't willing to change, but they were very open to finding a better way of being who they wanted to be.
No amount of work on problems would have helped Gina and Chris. They needed to find the solution that was there all along.
So it is with many, many traders who find the future leaving them behind. They need to find the bridges that link old commitments to new, energizing directions.
The Rebuilding of Maxwell
I mentioned in the foreword that the immediate catalyst for this book was a review of ten of the top traders and portfolio managers I had worked with in the last decade. In a sense, this was my own solution-focused therapy. Performance coaches working with participants in financial markets encounter so much talk of failure, frustration, and shortcoming that it's necessary to occasionally step back and reconnect with all that is possible.
Maxwell was one of the top ten traders I had identified. For years he had been very successful trading intraday patterns in the S&P 500 e-mini (ES) futures market. His frequent refrain was that other traders were “idiots.” They chased markets, put their stops at obvious levels, and otherwise replicated behaviors that provided Maxwell with a trading edge. I wouldn't describe Maxwell as particularly intellectual, but he was very intelligent – and unusually shrewd. He was an avid gambler and had an uncanny ability to figure out the other players at the poker table. He seemed to know when others were bluffing, when they were on tilt, and when they held the nuts. While he knew the probabilities attached to various hands, it was his keen perception of his opponents that enabled him to bluff, fold, or go all in.
Maxwell contended that the players in the ES futures were like rookies at the poker table. That's what made them idiots. One of Maxwell's key trading patterns was fading “pukes.” When he saw the market breaking key support and traders baling out of their positions, he knew that fear was driving
