Whenever I have been in the zone and on a winning run, if I think back, it always felt very natural and was about acting and reacting without analysing and thinking. On the contary, when I've been doing badly, the opposite seems to hold, I am always over analysing, thinking and hesitating and then finally acting just as the price changed.
Performance consultant, author and speaker, John Eliot, talks about high performers using a "trusting mindset" whereas everyone else uses a "training mindset". The trusting mindset is what I would call the unconscious mind and the training mind set is the conscious mind.
When a skill is initially being learnt, it is done very deliberately and every action is scrutinised and practiced. This is all a very conscious activity. If you think to when you learnt to drive. Changing gear was a bitch! It was a long and complicated operation requiring full concentration (at least it was for me). A very conscious activity (training midset).
After you have been driving a while, changing gear is easy and you can do it whilst talking to your mate in the passenger seat without thinking about it. This is an unconscious operation (trusting midset).
Any skill is trained consciously and then becomes almost a habit as it is transferred to the unconscious. The thing is, if you start to think too much about something when you are doing it, it ends up working through the conscious (training mindset) route which is slower and more deliberate. The same holds with trading. When you are trading 10 minutes before the off, you need to be ready to act quickly and confidently otherwise you miss the boat. This is an environment where the unconscious shines. If you have ever had a winning run, where you have been in the zone, you will know what it is like. It is all about trusting your unconscious to know what to do and not trying to second guess yourself.
"How to Stop Losing and Start Profiting"