At this point, if you can sense the benefits of adopting the five fundamental truths about trading, then the task is to learn how to properly integrate these truths into your mental system as core beliefs that are not in conflict with any other beliefs you may hold. At first glance, this may seem like a daunting task and under other circumstances I would agree with you, but it won't be, because in Chapter 11 I'll give you a simple trading exercise specifically designed to properly install these truths as beliefs at a functional level.

A functional level is, one where you find yourself just naturally operating out of a carefree state of mind, perceiving exactly what you need to do and doing it without hesitation or internal conflict. However, I do have a word of caution for those of you who have already looked at the exercise. On the surface, the trading exercise looks so simple that you may be tempted to do it now, before you thoroughly understand the implications of what you are doing. I strongly suggest that you reconsider. There are some subtle yet profound dynamics involved in the process of learning how to install new beliefs and change any existing beliefs that are in conflict with the new ones. Understanding the trading exercise itself is easy. Understanding how to use the exercise to change your beliefs is another matter entirely. If you do the exercise without understanding the concepts presented in this chapter and the next, you will not achieve the desired results. It is also important that you not take for granted the amount of mental effort you may have to expend to train your mind to fully accept these principles of success, regardless of how well you understand them. Remember Bob, the CTA who believed he thoroughly understood the concept of probabilities, but didn't have the ability to function from a probabilistic perspective. Many people make the mistake of assuming that once they understand something, the insight inherent in their new understanding automatically becomes a functional part of their identity.

Most of the time, understanding a concept is only a first step in the process of integrating that concept at a functional level. This is especially true of concepts that deal with diinking in probabilities. Our minds are not naturally wired to be "objective" or to stay in the "now moment." This means we have to actively train our minds to think from these perspectives. In addition to the training involved, there may be any number of conflicting beliefs to work through. Conflicting beliefs will have the effect of sabotaging your best intentions to operate from an objective state of mind or to experience the "now moment opportunity flow." For example, let's say you've spent years learning how to read the markets, or spent large sums of money developing or buying technical systems, just so you could find out what was going to happen next.

Now you have come to understand that you don't have to know what's going to happen next, and that even trying to know will detract from your ability to be objective or to stay in the moment. What we have is a direct conflict between your old belief that you need to know what will happen next to be successful and your new understanding that you don't need to know. Now, will your new understanding suddenly neutralize all the time, money, and energy expended on reinforcing the belief that you "need to know"? I wish it were that easy. And for some lucky few, it may be. If you will recall in Chapter 4 when I talked about psychological distance in relationship to software code, I said that some traders may already be so close to these new perspectives that all they need is to put together a few of the missing pieces to create a mindaltering, "ah, ha" experience. However, based on my experience of working with well over a thousand traders, I can say that most are not close to these perspectives at all. For those of you who are not, it may take a considerable amount of mental work (over a considerable amount of time) to properly integrate your new understandings about trading into your mental environment.

The good news is that, ultimately, the exercise I present in Chapter 11 will install the five fundamental truths and resolve many of the potential conflicts, but only if you know exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it. That is the subject of this and the next chapter.