The Holy Grail To Peak Performance

Once in a blue moon, if you are one of the few lucky ones (or one of the few chosen ones, depending on what you believe), you would come across something so profoundly powerful and life-changing yet so elegant and simple that you would say to yourself “Gee, this is like a dream come true…” or “Gee, my prayer of long has finally been answered…” To me, it was both and more. Nowadays when I look back at having completed the Traders’ Peak Performance Mastermind (TPPM) Course which Simon organized and Gilia delivered, I would feel there really is a Holy Grail in trader psychology and trader peak performance, and I have found it.

When I first received Simon’s email invitation to join the second trial, I hesitated quite a bit. Having started the trading journey more than 7 years ago, I have joined countless others to blow my first account in my early days. Since then, I have focused on getting myself properly educated in strategy and psychology. I have bought my fair share (actually a sizable share) of trading courses and trading psychology training. It was not like I don’t already have enough learning materials on trading psychology to work with for the next 12 months so although the trial was offered on a major discount, I did not see a strong need to acquire yet another tool to improve my trader psychology. Despite that, three things really caught my eyes when viewing the marketing material on Simon’s site – that there is no other training like this; the technique being taught is exceptionally simple yet very powerful; and that the program would enable traders to work on BOTH emotions AND beliefs. More on this last point later. I also viewed a video testimony of someone who joined the first trial and he plainly said his fear of missing out was completely gone after the training, which although was astounding to me sounded nevertheless a little too good to be true. Anyway, I let the email sit in the inbox for a few days and knowing that the deadline to join was getting close, I decided to pray and seek God to see what He thinks. I was expecting a “no” answer from Him to confirm my suspicion that I don’t really need another course when I haven’t even finished the other ones. Much to my surprise, God’s answer was “yes”; He not only approved of me taking the course but I felt that He said to me: “I want to help you and bless you with this program.” So I took a plunge of faith and joined, and indeed ended up being greatly helped and blessed at the end.

Back to the earlier point about emotions and beliefs. There is a reason why the course was not called “Traders’ Peak Psychology Training”. It is simply because Traders’ Peak Performance is so much more than just overcoming common psychological issues like fear. The fact that the marketing materials conveyed an understanding that traders need a hold on not just their emotions but also their beliefs gave me great reassurance that Simon and Gilia know what they’re talking about. Even if you don’t yet understand why trader success depends as much, if not much more, on your beliefs than your emotions, you would gain tremendous benefits from only applying what the course teaches on your psychology. Good news is, whether or not you believe at this stage that your beliefs are of utmost important to your success, the course will cover them and teach you how to relatively easily uninstall unhelpful ones, and how to remove obstacles to or install helpful new ones, so that if one day you find a need to work with your beliefs, you would already have the tool to do so.

To say that the TPPM course is the Holy Grail in BOTH trader psychology and trader peak performance is not an exaggeration. One very well known guru who wrote the book Matrix has developed sophisticated education materials around trader beliefs. That guru also created a course that analyzes the beliefs of top traders. He teaches a unique approach to adopt those same beliefs, which seems to work for a lot of people but requires a long time and much financial investment. Another lesser known guru teaches on the mental state of trading, and again, his stuff works on a lot of people. His materials also touch on trader beliefs. Another famous educator teaches that if you want to be a successful trader, you need to get yourself into a discomfort zone and develop an ability to stay in it. This last guy has counted quite a few institutional people as his clients. I have bought learning materials from the first two gurus and have read the newsletters of the last one. After having completed the TPPM course in its entirety, practiced what it teaches extensively in real-life situations and developed a deep experiential understanding of its inner working, I would say this – the TPPM course should not only be the STARTING POINT AND FOUNDATON OF ALL OTHER trading psychology training out there, but can deliver what many of the other training cannot provide. For example, instead of deliberately getting yourself into a zone of discomfort, you can simply use the technique taught in the TPPM course to overcome the discomfort so that it is no longer a discomfort and you rise to be at a higher level of psychology and performance. As for the materials on belief training created by the first guru I talked about above, you can simply apply what is taught in the TPPM course to easily and relatively quickly install and incorporate beneficial beliefs to help you succeed as a trader, versus taking his approach which takes a much longer time and at much greater cost.

When Simon said in one of the learning sessions that the sky is the limit for those who have taken this course, he was not joking. I have separately and independently come to the exact same conclusion about this program. Just to be clear, this program will not replace your faith; it will not solve every problem in your life; it will not and cannot give you moral guidance or give you answers to your deepest spiritual ponderings; what it will do and it does so with shining colors is provide a tremendously and almost infinitely applicable tool to help you deal with two of the greatest challenges as a trader and as a human being – your unhelpful emotions and your hindering beliefs. The tool it teaches is exceptionally elegant and simple, yet infinitely applicable and versatile in all areas of life, including your trader life, but I will leave you to draw that conclusion yourself, and if you commit yourself to learning and practicing it in your daily life, you will no doubt reach that same conclusion. And this leads me to the next point.

When I first joined the program, I wanted to accomplish complete mastery over my emotions. Specifically, I had been working on an anger issue for a long time. I had already made progress in the previous months and years but wanted to see how the course would help further that. After the first week of live session, I was confronted with and given plenty of opportunities to be triggered into the same anger situation as if by divine appointment to give me plenty of opportunities to practice the technique taught in the course. Multiple times almost every day for a few weeks I had to keep on practicing the technique to deal with anger and it was in this context that I experienced my first Aha moment.

I started to realize how much emotions of all kinds play an active role in my daily life and decisions. Together with that realization was the realization and accompanying gratitude that I now had an extremely effective technique at my disposal to deal with those emotions! I started to be able to see how my emotions are not me, and how they can be effectively dealt with so that I could live life differently. To put it another way, I was starting to see the potential of how to live life without being a slave to negative emotions. Later on during the live sessions, Gilia taught us how to nurture positive emotions so that we are now empowered to not just deal with negative emotions, but can live life more joyfully.

In the following weeks as I continued practicing the technique in my views about money and in anger, I received two more significant Aha insights. While doing the work on my feeling about money, I suddenly gained an inner knowing and remembrance that “God is a God of plenty, not a god of lack!” It was a life-changing moment that changed my entire perspective about money and financial resources. I had already been working on the Biblical teaching that we are called to be good stewards of resources on earth, including financial resources, and the arrival of this insight complemented and cemented a truly Biblical understanding of how I was to view money.
As I continued to work on anger, a second significant Aha moment came to me. One day as I was doing the technique on anger, a picture came to me and I started to see the trifecta of factors involved in my anger situations, as if from a neutral and detached third party point of view – I saw the person in my life that was provoking my anger; I saw my own fleshy reaction to the provocation; then lastly I saw the escalated angry response of that person that finally brought the situation into a downward spiral of triggered anger in me. The moment I realized this, I also came to realize that I can try to do the technique on the entire drama so that I was using the technique on the trifecta of elements involved in the anger drama instead of just my anger response. As I started to practice that, I gained yet another insight – that behind and underlying my anger emotion are certain unhelpful and false beliefs about myself and about the situation, without which I would not be as angry. I started to realize that while the emotions are the symptoms, some of the roots are false beliefs.

As of today, and even just two weeks after I completed the course, I can joyfully and gratefully say that I have come to a place where I have made such tremendous progress in the area of anger that it amazes me. Strangely enough, the person in my life no longer “contributed to” triggering my anger as much as before. Whereas before it was a 8-10 (10 being the max), nowadays it’s a 2-3 in terms of occasional triggering. I guess you can say that when we have learned the lessons in life, the triggering situations no longer need to be there to try to help us learn those lessons.

As I continued to diligently practice the technique in my daily life, in all areas of emotions, beliefs and resistances to beliefs, I started to gain more and more insight and understanding, both of how to apply the technique, when to apply the technique and how it could help my trader life and my personal and family life. It was an understatement to say that on certain days, I had an explosion of insight and Aha moments. Excitement started to well up. My list of negative emotions, positive emotions, resistances to helpful/desirable beliefs, negative/unhelpful beliefs and positive/desirable beliefs to work on became longer and longer. I began to literally see a bright future where I would possess all the desirable trading emotions and beliefs which I need to be as successful as I aspire to be, so that I can fulfill the part of my life’s mission related to trading. I started to see the immense potential this course and technique offer to me both personally and tradingwise. It was at that point later in the course that I came to the conclusion as Simon has done that the sky really is the limit for those who have taken the course. It’s not just helpful to trading. If one day in the future I feel called to start some brick-and-mortar business on the side, I can apply the same technique to help me develop the unique characteristics and qualities which I would need to succeed in business. If I feel called one day to run a marathon, I can also apply the same technique to help me be a successful runner.

To give you a taste of what I realized, consider for a moment the Market Wizards book series. Take any one of the Market Wizards books and go through it, making a laundry list of the qualities and trading virtues that those top traders possess, it doesn’t matter what those qualities are. Once you have the list, you can just apply the technique taught in the course and work on desirable qualities which you feel called to develop until you have integrated the same qualities. You don’t like the Market Wizards books? Go on the Internet and search for a podcast or interview with an ex-Institutional Trader. Make a list of his or her trading qualities and virtues, apply the technique and in time, those qualities can be yours.

A word of caution. To gain the great benefits which I and other students have gained from the course, you need to be ready to pay the price. The price of actively participating in the live sessions, the price of diligently learning and practicing between the live sessions, the price of keeping a record or journal of some sort of your discoveries and questions so you can ask Gilia afterwards, and most importantly, taking advantage of the precious opportunity to have one-on-one coaching sessions with Gilia. Having the chance to do those one-on-one sessions with Gilia was alone worth the entry price to me. In the first 2-hour one-on-one session with Gilia, we have gone through so many deep issues and I have received so many breakthroughs it was simply mind-boggling. That first one-on-one session really catapulted me into making a strong commitment to participating in all aspects of the course, as deeply and as broadly as I possibly could. So if you want the most from the course, make sure you set aside the time, energy and efforts to do what is needed.

If someone told me at the beginning of the course that such things were possible, I would have a hard time believing it. Yet the course was real, the technique taught was real, and so are the results. I am benefitting daily from what I have learned from the course, and I foresee for many years and decades to come in my developing trading career and in my personal/family life, and I am tremendously grateful for it.

For anyone struggling with the decision to join this course: do it, you will never regret it. This IS truly the Holy Grail to trading psychology and peak performance.

p.s. If you are a Christian Trader, pray and ask God like I did, and see what He says. Later on, I will share through Gilia some tips I have accumulated over the past few months on how to apply the technique from a Christian point of view, and also how to apply the technique in our Christian walk with God. Anyone interested can contact Gilia later on to request the info.

Testimonial by Adrian (East Coast)