Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery – Book Review

What if you could operate in the stillness and peacefulness of your subconscious? Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery (affiliate link) book tells you how to do this.

This is a book I finished reading for the 2nd time because it has a ton of gems and easy-to-incorporate ideas to improve my meditation practice.

For those of you who are unaware, Kenny Werner is an American jazz pianist, composer, and author. Here is the description of him from his Wikipedia page:

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 19, 1951 and then growing up in Oceanside, Long Island, Werner began playing and performing at a young age, first recording on television at the age of 11. Although he studied classical piano as a child, he enjoyed playing anything he heard on the radio and improvisation was his true calling. In high school and his first years of college he attended the Manhattan School of Music as a classical piano major.

His aptitude for improvisation led him to the Berklee College of Music in 1970, where he met and studied with his first piano/spiritual teacher, Madame Chaloff. From Boston, Werner traveled to Brazil with the saxophonist Victor Assis Brasil. There he met Assis’s twin brother, Brazilian pianist Joao Assis Brasil. His studies with Joao and Madame Chaloff would lead to the writing of the book Effortless Mastery.

 

The video above is where I first learned about Kenny Werner and his Effortless Mastery system he teaches. He credits it to the success that took him to be an extremely successful jazz musician. In his book I will talk about further, he says that growing up the one skill he had that set him apart from the other kids was playing the piano.

But when he went to college he was just another very good piano player which was devastating to his ego and his psyche. This is where the journey to Effortless Mastery began.

Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery – How Does It Apply to Trading?

You might be thinking, how does a book from a jazz musician help with my trading journey? To be honest it doesn’t if you look at it from only a jazz musician angle. But it takes little effort to see how the lessons and skills he teaches can be incorporated into just about any skill you are looking to improve upon.

In fact, it can be used for your life altogether.

One of the biggest issues I have with my life and not just trading is I feel like I have to be in control. If I am not in control then everything will fall apart. Obviously, that is not true at all about everything falling apart if I am not in control.

The Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery book teaches us that control is not the goal. Letting go of control is the goal.

But for some reason, I developed the thought process that I must be in control. This goes against what I am trying to do. With meditation, I am seeking the answers for trade setups that work for me from my subconscious. Then when I have those trade setups I fine-tune them until they work for me.

Next, I go live with them and start profiting. But then somewhere along the way, I get greedy and my control takes over. I start to think I know when the price is turning in a trade and I start leveraging my position because I know the price can’t go much more against me.

Of course, the price continues to move against me and now I am in a big hole. This is how I blew my first account where I ran a $3,000 account to almost $20,000 in a year.

If I would continue to follow the plan and not get over leveraged then it would not be an issue. But my control issue takes over and I quit trusting the trade setups I developed from my meditation. Then I “take over” and that is when everything starts falling apart.

It is still an issue I am working on and one that I recognize is my biggest issue with consistent profitability through trading.

This is where I must continue to trade and operate from my subconscious. Before I trade or even look at the charts I must get into that space. That right there would solve a ton of issues for me.

I can get to that place when meditating to discover trade setups but I must now continue to operate from that space when trading.

Getting into that place or space is the overall theme to the Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery system.

Master the Basics Through Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery

Kenny teaches us to trust and play from our subconscious. That you should not practice or play until you are in that state which is playing from your subconscious. Then and only then should you start playing. But that isn’t the only item to remember. He also recommends you master each phase of playing before you move on to the next.

That means that a musician should master the basics before moving to harder musical pieces. You should be able to play each piece of music at a master level where you don’t even have to think about it. Your fingers automatically play the piano and the music comes from your subconscious.

He says a big issue is most people move on to the next piece of music before mastering the previous because their ego tells them they have to keep “progressing” and the only way to do that is to keep doing harder and harder musical numbers.

This is where their ego and need for control take over. When you do this you shut out your playing from your subconscious mind and this is where the issues arise.

This is where traders get themselves into trouble as well. Instead of focusing on the basics and truly mastering the trade setups that work for them, they bounce from one system to the next (usually spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars in the process) in hopes of finding the system that will work for them.

I was once like that. I used every setup and trade strategy from trend lines, volume profiles, moving averages, and tons of other indicators in hopes that one would work this time!

It wasn’t until I began meditating and searching for answers through my subconscious that I actually started making money from trading. Please don’t think I am currently making tens of thousands of dollars per day. I am not but plan to one day.

I am still uncovering and learning ( as mentioned above about my control issue) what I need to do to improve every day so I can be a little bit more profitable than the day before.

In fact, I am now working on meditating before I even look at the charts or begin to trade. Even if it is just for one minute. It is a habit I am creating to ensure I trade from my subconscious and not my ego who is always looking to control every aspect of my life in order to try and keep me safe.

The system through the Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery book has helped keep me guided on that path.

But I never would have gotten to this point if I didn’t start meditating and searching my subconscious for answers.

Trading and Meditation with Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery

This site I created was to help traders and to hopefully show how meditation can improve just about every area of their life. Even though I primarily got into meditation I soon learned it can improve any area of your life.

Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery proves how meditation can be done to improve your performance if you are a musician. So even though being a jazz musician and trading are two different skills, the process to tap into your subconscious for improved performance is just about the same.

One of my favorite sentences in the book is “Mastery comes to all who wait for it.”

How perfectly does that describe trading no matter the time frame you use! When we rush our trades and press are when failures happen. It is when the battle of fear and greed is in full swing and we are just a boat being tossed around in a storm.

But when we calm our minds and work from our subconscious, that is where winning and profitability begin to happen. How many times have you heard “Don’t force trades!” Or “Don’t rush your trades!”

Those are sayings that you have heard hundreds if not thousands of times. Now you know why it has become such a popular saying. I doubt most people who stress about not forcing trades really knows why you shouldn’t.

It is because when you try to force something you are not operating from your subconscious. For me, it is acting from my ego and seeking to control rather than let go and trust my subconscious.

The goal is to trade from the space, or trade from your subconscious. It is the same principle for trading. Doing anything without being in the space is not worth doing. You are simply grinding your gears.

Steps to Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery

Kenny describes in his book how he learned effortless mastery. Basically what he did was only put one finger on a piano key until he could put two on the piano keys and still be in the space (working from his subconscious).

Next, when he could put three fingers on the keyboard and remain in the space he did so. He did this until he could put all 10 on the keyboard and play.

These are the steps Kenny recommends in his book that I took from this website:

1. Relax and surrender the need to sound good
2. Let go of control and observe your results without judgment
3. Stay out of the way and let the music play itself, even if it feels like taking a few steps backward
4. Combine all the steps and learn to familiarize yourself with new ideas by trying less

These steps must come after you have discovered ‘the space’ through meditation where Kenny has two different meditation sessions he coaches you through the book.

Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery Conclusion

I highly recommend Kenny Werner’s book Effortless Mastery. This book was a great reminder of how I need to take a minute to focus on my subconscious and seek to get into that space before I trade.

In fact, I should look to do this before I do just about anything.

My biggest obstacle to my success is myself. To be honest, it is a little depressing to type this but it is the truth.

In my effort to control the outcome I sabotage the results. So despite my best efforts and intentions I always come up short in trading when I take matters into my own hands.

The Kenny Werner Effortless Mastery system has reminded me to always seek to learn and live from my subconscious. It is something I am working to make a habit of.

Before I begin anything I am striving to take at least a minute to focus on the stillness and peace in order to tap into my subconscious.

Hopefully, this review has helped you out. This was a very easy read and I highly recommend it. I will be adding it to my Best Meditation Books for Traders post.

Take care,

Evan Carthey