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THE CORE
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Physically, the core consists of the limbus, the reticular activating system, the thalamus, the hypothalamus, and the whole spinal section of the brain. The left hemisphere is analogous to a digital computer; the core is more like an analog computer. Our survey of research indicates that the core can handle from 500,000 to 3,000,000 bits of information per second, compared to the left hemisphere's measly 16 bits per second. If you were to close your eyes right now and name every item you remember seeing in the room where you are sitting as you read this, you might be able to list 30 to 75 items. However, if you were hypnotized (hypnotism gives access to the core), you most likely could list several hundred or even thousands of items.

You are only aware of seeing a portion of what the retina sends down the optic nerve. Think, can you hear birds? A clock ticking? An air conditioner? Automobiles or maybe a plane outside? Where were they before you thought about them? The core knew they were there. Most information must be filtered out by the reticular activating system because the left hemisphere can handle only a measly amount of input compared to the core or right hemisphere. That is why we see stupid errors in trading after the fact rather than in the present tense.

The core needs this power because it basically handles our entire life. It decides about our blood temperature, the carbon dioxide level in the blood, whether we need another drop of hydrochloric acid to finish digesting that last bit of food in the stomach. It tells us when we are sleepy, hungry, thirsty, and so on. If there were some possible techniques to harness all this power for trading, would it help? You bet it would. And therein lies the big difference between the ordinary successful trader and the outstanding leader in trading. Level Four trading brings the core into our trading activities.

Recall that one of the main functions of the left hemisphere is to habituate behavior—to "teach" the core to take over the various operations that the left hemisphere has neither the time nor the power to coordinate.

The core controls your behavior when you aren't consciously focused on it. All your five senses must go through the core before you can become conscious of them. In hypnosis, the left hemisphere is temporarily sidelined, and suggestions go directly to the core. When that happens, behavior changes dramatically. In firewalking workshops, hours are spent "getting the student ready" in both body and mind. Suggestions of confidence are given over and over until the left hemisphere habituates that feeling by allaying the fear and allowing the core to take over. Because the core does not understand spoken lan­guage, visualization is used extensively. The negative left- hemisphere words "don't burn" are abandoned; instead, the image of "cool moss" is created in the core. The only people who get burned in a firewalking seminar are those who are unsuccessful in transferring responsibility to the core.

Have you ever been driving down a highway and suddenly realized that you don't remember driving through the last town? If you don't remember, who was driving? The core, of course. Or have you ever had the experience of narrowly missing a serious car wreck? After the scare was over and you re­played the incident, you realized that you automatically did whatever was necessary to save you from being seriously hurt. The core was working again. The core is a genius compared to the left hemisphere. Yet, almost everything the core knows be-haviorally was taught to it by the idiot left hemisphere. If your left hemisphere taught the core some behavior that is not as successful as you wish, you can reteach it.

When you are operating from your core, life seems like a roller coaster ride (Figure 11-5). Let's examine the differences in outlook between a stair-step type of world and a roller coaster world. On the roller coaster, it is not nearly as important where you are in the progression of the ride. Even if you

Figure 11-5 The core as a roller coaster ride.

are at the highest pinnacle of the ride, you know what is coming next—a stomach-wrenching drop toward the ground. That is not too depressing because you know you will soon be at the top again.

Time, for the core, resembles a circle rather than a straight line. In fact, the core is not concerned with the "progression of time." Things and events simply are either "now" or "not

now."

The core is the originator of all your feelings. What happens physiologically is that the core determines what to do with the "juices" of the body—the blood, interstitial tissue fluid, other body liquids. Because the body is mostly liquid, it is a very pliable piece of machinery. When you get fearful, the core directs the juices of the body to the abdominal region. It does this for a good reason: protection. When you are angry or have rage, the juices flow quickly to the muscle tissue, enabling you to take action. You probably can't keep still when you're very angry. Your juices are stimulating the muscles to move, often dramatically. When you are very happy, in love, romantic, feeling really good, the juices flow to the skin. That's why a young couple, newly in love, seems to just gleam. Many pregnant mothers glow because they are happy and the juices are moving to the skin. Every feeling you have is caused by varia­tion of this "juice flow." What does all this have to do with trading? Everything! If we can get in touch with our core, we can control our juices, our feelings, our sensations, and our trading.

Now we come to a problem that you probably have already anticipated. If the core is so powerful and if everything that we think about in the left hemisphere comes from the core, there has to be a gigantic "file cabinet" and/or "trash can" between the core and the left hemisphere. Something, somewhere has to decide which 16 bits of information, from the average 3,000,000 coming in each second, to send to the left hemisphere. Physio­logically and probably psychologically, that transmitter is the reticular activating system (RAS).

The RAS, located between your ears, is one of the best protected areas of your entire body (Figure 11-6). It is about the size of your little finger, and 70 percent of all your brain cells have a connection to it. If you damage it in any way, you fall into a coma and remain in a coma until it starts working again. When you go to sleep tonight, your RAS has sent a message to your hypothalamus to secrete a bit of a hormone known as

serotonin, which lets the left hemisphere retire for a while. (Remember that the left hemisphere, our so-called conscious mind, is the only part of your body that goes unconscious or sleeps.) One of the primary functions of the RAS is to determine or decide what information is sent to your left hemisphere (conscious mind).

Because this function of "paying attention to" is so important and vital to successful trading, we must ask: How does the RAS learn to decide? It is almost a paradox that the left hemisphere, which is totally dependent on the RAS for an information filter, also teaches the RAS what it should pay attention to. This teaching happens through the habituation process, which we discussed earlier. Let's look at a couple of examples. When you walk down a busy city sidewalk, you hear hundreds of footsteps and you pay absolutely no attention to them. When you are at home and a member of the family walks down your wood-floor hall, you recognize who it is by the footsteps. But when you are awakened in the middle of the night and think you hear strange footsteps, your entire body/mind goes on alert. Very different reactions are triggered by whether the RAS permitted the information to reach the left hemisphere. This process is almost totally automatic: you are not consciously aware of it from the left hemisphere.

In trading, what you notice when the market moves is what you have taught your RAS to notice through past experience and your left-hemisphere evaluation of that past experience. This brings up one of the vital keys to successful trading: simply noticing. This activity is unbelievably difficult for most of us. We believe we are constantly doing it when in reality we almost never do it. Let's do an experiment here. Your participation consists of simply observing, without changing anything, an activity that you have done hundreds of times already today with no difficulty. Let me tell you beforehand: this is a tough thing to do. I want you to observe your breathing pattern.

Most participants have one of two reactions: they either start breathing a little deeper or they hold their breath. Did you make any small change in your breathing? If so, you are not simply observing. Probably the judgmental function of your left hemisphere came in and said, "What am I supposed to be doing?" or "Should I breathe a bit deeper?"

Let's try an even more illuminating experiment. This time, as you simply observe, I want you to do something else that you have done hundreds of times already today—something so vital that you could live only a short time without doing it. It's easy. You know exactly and precisely how to do it, and you do it so often you don't even notice doing it 99 percent of the time. In fact, you were doing it even before you were born.

Your task is to swallow five times as fast as you can (without drinking or eating anything) and notice how you do it.

Did you do it? If not, please don't read any further until you do. It is very important.

What changes did you notice in your ability to swallow, each time you attempted to do it on purpose? It not only be­came more difficult but it took longer to accomplish it each time, right? Why? Because you were trying to do a job that had long ago been habituated to your core. When you focus the spotlight of the left hemisphere on swallowing, it interferes with the vital functions of that powerful core. This is exactly what happens while trading. Most trading should be a function of the core. When we focus left-hemisphere attention on it, it becomes unbelievably difficult and less profitable. Analysis of the market is a left-hemisphere function; the act of trading is a core and right-hemisphere function.

The uniqueness of your core brain is the amount of information it can handle and sort out. When it is used appropriately, you have no feelings of hurry, judgment, use of language, or struggle. You are also having good feelings and a good time.

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