now that you have a brief idea of what mental analysis actually is i want to delve deeper into each concept of mental analysis and how it pertains to day trading after we've developed a deeper understanding of mental analysis we will then create strategies to help you in day trading and in life first we need to discuss why some people fail to master mental analysis they hit a roadblock and spiral down the hole to where they started feeling defeated and struggled to get back to the progression where they were initially at these roadblocks can create a profound impact on your failure and success there are four main categories that roadblocks fall under they are our subconscious mind cognitive abilities our environment and the attributes of our mind let's start off with a greater understanding of how our subconscious mind works let's use an example to begin i remember as a young child my family didn't have a lot of money growing up so when it came to dinner time i was always told to finish every last morsel of food and if i didn't it was wrapped up in place in the fridge to be eaten as the next meal this repetitive nature trained my subconscious mind to trick my body into not feeling full until my plate was completely clear and to this day the nature of this relationship is quite odd which i continue to have with food it has created a weird problem of under eating constantly or overeating in an abundance because i don't have the proper tools to gauge a response instead i just have an uncontrollable reaction this of course is because it had been ingrained in my subconscious mind most of my life this has created a roadblock for weight loss a unique problem that shouldn't exist but only does because deep down inside my mind it had been reinforced for a lifetime you see this is just one simple example of a problem that has harmful long-term effects and only exists because it was something that was told to me and that i continue to repeat over and over for years you see this is just one simple example of a problem that has harmful long-term effects and only exists because it was something that was told to me that i continue to repeat over and over for years now let's take a common subconscious roadblock in day trading often we're in one trade and while we're watching the markets we see another trade go absolutely crazy it goes up an amazing 50 to 100 percent so naturally we start to think things like why wasn't i in that trade or how come i'm not smart enough to have seen this or it's always somebody else making the money and not me i'm the one always losing money while everybody else seems to be making money these are very common responses i observe with my students let's look at this one by one at first we said why was an eye in the trade this is the typical response we say in our head every time we see the markets moving subconsciously we've now started to program our mind to have an altered selecting process i often see people making beautiful charts that make a lot of sense but are too afraid to take that trade so they take a different trade and guess what happens that trade you pick goes down while the perfectly charted trade that you didn't take goes up strengthening the negative impact on our confidence and leaving its residue on our mind another common response is why wasn't i smart enough to be in that trade just like our first example another typical response except this time we're starting to doubt our own intelligence we create a hazard in our mind somewhat like a pot hole in a road a missing piece that we purposely avoid we're actively reducing our technical abilities by creating a subconscious roadblock not being smart enough and lastly there's always somebody else making the money and not me i always lose money while everybody else seems to be making money thus creating the effect on our subconscious mind that we're meant to lose money and can never make it which also furthers the belief that this isn't a sustainable career which as you can imagine creates an entirely new set of mental roadblocks these are just a few of the examples of problems that we are creating for ourselves when we choose not to control our subconscious mind in my many years i've seen the same patterns be repeated over and over and over like a broken record it seems that almost every trader i come across encounters these roadblocks in varying degrees of severity for aspiring and professional traders this single type of roadblock is a major factor in achieving success i've worked with and mentored people who are using account sizes of 100 all the way to the millions and these behaviors are displayed in both groups in an identically eerie way had i not observed this for myself i wouldn't believe it but these roadblocks are identical in both groups they exhibit the same behaviors and struggles with the same subconscious cues the thing is the subconscious mind only knows what we constantly tell it so failure is failure no matter the amount it can't ascertain value as it's driven by the emotional not the cognitive processes such as processing data or as shown in this example as money and value now let's talk about the emotional responses as they drive the subconscious mind as we just outlined a few pitfalls they all share a commonality they're created by emotionally driven responses let's go back to those three things we said in our head if you think of the situation that created the sayings it's easy to see that these are very emotional reactions just like my story about not having to finish my food and onset leads to an emotional response which stains the subconscious understanding this means that we've now identified the roadblock and pinpointed the root of this evil our friend emotional analysis we'll come back to emotional analysis in the future with a plan of action on how to assess our emotions and create systems that instead of damaging our subconscious mind through negative emotional states we'll create a system that boosts our ability to control the emotions and reprogram our subconscious with positive effects it's time to switch gears and now discuss the environment we create as our second major roadblock environmental factors play a unique role in all three types of analysis that we've defined psychological emotional and sociocultural to better understand this we must define environmental let's use a very basic unrelated example you have a dirty dish that needs to be cleaned but the only water you have is foggy and smells old the cloth you're using is stained and dirty and you've also run out of soap now the objective is very simple clean the dish but the created environment makes it impossible to achieve the task basic problem with a solution you see the solutions are very mechanical in nature mechanical here means it's a controllable and tangible part of our environment that we can choose to change think of trying to cut a steak you have a butter knife which is typically used to spread jam or peanut butter you also have a serrated knife it's great to cut food with a tough shell such as bread and you have a razor sharp knife meant for things like meat three different options all with separate mechanical advantages you're not going to use a steak knife to cut bread just like you wouldn't use the butter knife to cut steak very different mechanical solutions all with different problems they solve this is what environmental means it's controlling our surrounding environments with mechanical solutions to better achieve goals in a smarter more concise way our environment therefore has both a direct and indirect impact on all three types of analysis let's begin by seeing how this relates to emotional analysis as we discussed our subconscious onsets the emotions and our environment can affect our subconscious again let's go to a very simple example how do you feel when you walk into a dirty office versus a clean office the dirty office makes us feel anxious cramped and generally annoyed let's see how this would quickly impact our emotional state which then affects our subconscious mind very quick example of how our environment affects our emotions a common environmental roadblock i've struggled with is leaving empty coffee cups on my desk from the night before as they pile up i get mad when i look at them and when i forget to bring them out i get annoyed when i go get my next cup of coffee only to wonder where all the coffee mugs are such a simple thing yet this environmental situation i've created impacts me in an indirect way the quick mechanical solution here would be to just use one cup throughout the day which is the most basic mechanical solution possible that won't negatively affect me now that you understand how the environmental affects our emotional state let's move on to the psychological our cognitive functions are controlled by the state of our psychological mind these can be defined as tasks for the brain such as attention processing memory decision making communication knowledge and judgment our environment plays a major role in how effective we use these parts of our brain here's an example i frequently observe in day traders while on their computers and looking at the markets they're also checking scores on sports matches trending news watching videos on youtube or whatever else falls into their interests they struggle with having too many windows open which makes them lose focus and decrease efficiency this therefore diminishes our attention span which alters our decision making ability and displaces our judgment multiple psychological roadblocks that reduce our efficiency through inefficient cognitive function do to our environment the final one we'll discuss is sociocultural roadblocks this is defined as the world and culture around you such as your friends family city you live in and the way in which society views you in our case this can be the trend set by people in the market the socio-cultural factors that affect your environment can hinder your success say for example your parents don't believe that day trading is a legitimate career they would rather you become a doctor or a lawyer as it's more of a respectable career in their culture which they can be proud of in the back of your mind you're always doubting your decision to become a day trader thinking maybe they're right maybe i shouldn't have chosen this path if you don't have a supportive environment you will have a subconsciously negative sentiment regarding your career here's another example your friends have a normal nine-to-five job and they are always pressuring you to go out but you need to stay in because the markets move at different times every day these roadblocks are what separate the aspiring from the pros the best traders in the world are okay working friday and saturday nights and missing the parties they're also okay with waking up at 6 a.m and creating a stay-at-home structure they're okay with studying long hours even though they're already successful and they aren't impacted by the demands of societal cultures around them there's a deeper conversation to be had about social culture but for now we're only defining some of the roadblocks to open our mind let's begin with cognitive analysis scientific definition for cognitive analysis involves the study of internal mental processes all of the things that are going on inside of your brain including perception thinking memory attention language problem solving and learning this affects every aspect of our life the decisions we make how we perceive a situation a retention span or judgment in our day-to-day life so it's no wonder that this part of mental analysis is one of the most focused definitions of analysis we are constantly thinking about every decision we make every trade we do every experience we have and every one of these aspects that happen in the past and present affects our decisions in the future cognitively our mind has an associated quality with the decisions we make when the quality of our decisions are bad our psychological mind has failed us because it hasn't performed to its fullest capabilities this is something i like to think of as a cognitive malfunctioning our brain was meant to complete a task at its highest standard but instead it had an error that now needs to be repaired or rebuilt now i just said our brain needs to function at its highest standard this can be misleading for some people as the idea of operating at such a great height isn't achievable by everybody this is where most people get it wrong operating at the highest level isn't something a select few of us are born with rather it's a choice to take the necessary steps to achieve it let's compare our cognitive mind to building an engine you and nine other people make up a group of ten engineers you're all given the same task which is to build the perfect motor off of a set of instructions you're given you all have the same parts rules blueprints and opportunities however every engineer builds a different motor despite being in identical situations this is how i like to think of the cognitive mind we can build it to be an exact replica of the perfect motor now we're starting to understand what a cognitive roadblock looks like there is no right or wrong way to think but there is a better way to process the information our mind receives cognitively there has to be a balance in which we can overcome the endless negative thoughts easier said than done i know but with enough conscious practice you can shape your brain to process the negative thoughts in any way you want and even though we will master this there is still the emotional and socio-cultural aspects of mental analysis to conquer it's a long road but with hard work and practice you can get there through my life experience in hardships there was always one key factor that helped me see the end goal this is perception for example someone dealing with a new job that requires them to learn a new difficult skill may see this as an obstacle they say to themselves this is going to be too hard for me to learn there's not enough time in the day for me to really understand what goes into mastering this new skill so they've already perceived the situation as failure before even beginning now let's say the same person has a different outlook on life and sees this difficult skill as an opportunity to become an asset in their new job and possibly in another area of life they take every opportunity to really understand the ins and out of the skill they don't perceive this as an obstacle but i gained experience to perhaps ask for a raise later on that job thing about perception is it's actually the hardest cognitive trait to overcome it doesn't have a mechanical solution like other parts of our cognitive mind its solution is hidden in order to alter our perception we actually have to mechanically fix all other functions with mechanical solutions which means that mastering all other cognitive formats will give us our optimal perception this is a great way to understand this roadblock as we've now defined one of our first paths at achieving a better mind frame we've looked at three of the major roadblocks as our first step in understanding how to develop our best mindset this has been a very thorough and advanced way to look at mental analysis and the roadblocks on the path to moving past them this is actually so advanced that i think every form of mental analysis i've seen would have stopped here and been extremely happy in creating a highly developed understanding it was at this point and after developing my own mindset that i realized i was going to do this with day trading which is revered as a toughest field in the world playing for the highest stakes ever created in any profession i'd need to go further than any form of analysis i've ever seen before so i developed a complex series of ways to go deeper into the mind in order to build the core foundation and develop it in very specific ways while reinforcing it to push through any roadblock and protect what was created no matter the new obstacle i named the system devices this is my proprietary system that helped me achieve my greatest heights in day trading and life it comprises of attributes that specifically tackle our toughest roadblocks at a more fundamental level today i will introduce you to a portion of this which is part of a larger discussion in a series of complex lessons devoted to each of its own categories there are many things we need to master prank to working on these attributes for this reason let's briefly introduce devices devices is an acronym that describes the following dexterity which is our mind's ability to adapt quickly to new changing environments endurance this is the mind's ability to operate at high efficiency for long periods of time vitality the way in which we handle recovery intelligence our mind's ability to creatively find solutions and solve complex problems charisma this is the way we overcome defeat and our ability to bounce back energy our mind's ability to engage at its fullest when in high demand and lastly strength our mind's armor and how we persevere in static and dynamic situations this makes up of what i call devices again an acronym of the following dexterity endurance vitality intelligence charisma energy and strength once again as this lesson is focused on roadblocks we won't be dissecting our devices but i do want to show you how we'll be developing and using this system in the future so we've defined the roadblocks but we're still missing a key piece which in itself is another roadblock you see the thing is before we can break down all of these systems we talked about we have to have a path to get there standing in one spot and seeing the roadblock from a distance doesn't actually give us a way forward with a solution anybody can take a top down look at the problems in front of them and say i need to surpass these in order to be better but how many of us actually know what steps to take start knocking down these roadblocks this is where most people fail they don't know how to create the path that takes them through their roadblocks in the journey forward we're going to use devices as our tool you can think of devices as our vehicle traveling towards our goal we're going to use this vehicle as our tool to build our mind frames so we can break through any roadblock and achieve our goal this way we've identified the path we need to travel on the vehicle we're going to do it in and the goal we're driving towards today we've used our time very wisely by identifying roadblocks this is the first thing we need to do after clearing the slate which we did previously we've now understood some of the complexities involved in building our best self truly understanding what we talked about today is a huge step forward most people try to take this journey to better their mind but they stumble as they don't understand the depth of roadblocks and can't develop a path which leads them past it now you're one step closer than most people will ever get i've put you on the path i've shown you the vehicle and in the future i'll give you the keys right now however this is your first step this is the first step that most people never take you