| Home | My photos | Forex | My trading | Contacts |
|
|
You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
|
In fact, the amount of money you make trading will be in direct proportion to how flexible you can beREMAINING FLEXIBLE Years ago, I got some advice from a fellow trader in the S&P pit. He told me to never get married to a trade. Michael Douglas told Charlie Sheen to never get emotional about a stock (in the movie Wall Street). Those statements are much more than just pieces of advice picked up along the way. If you dont remain flexible and stay detached from your trades, you will not become successful in this business. Basically, what this means is very simple. No matter how strongly you feel about a trade, you need to be willing to give up on it in a moments notice. A very common occurrence for a trader is to get caught up in the particular trade they are in and put much more weight in that trade than it deserves. For instance, Ive talked to a lot of traders whove experienced a common feeling when in a trade. Ive even experienced it myself, occasionally. You feel as though you have to be right on this particular trade. This causes you to be inflexible about getting out of the trade. Even if the market is showing you signs that it isnt going to continue in your direction, many traders get so attached to their trades that they cannot be flexible enough to act in their own best interest. (Which is the only way to be successful.) Many times when this happens, the trader feels as though this is the last trade theyll ever be in. Inflexibility will kill your trading in a hurry. You see, to be a successful trader you need to be willing to change your mind quickly and easily. You certainly cant be fighting with yourself back and forth when youve got an open position in the market. It will be a disaster. In the real world, having a large ego can sometimes be helpful. Many people whove got large egos and think they are usually right also have the ability to also convince others that they are right. This works for many people. Those people with large egos dont need to be as flexible in the real world. At least they do not have to be flexible to the people they can convince they are right. But in the trading environment, being inflexible and unwilling to admit youre wrong will do nothing but drain your trading account dry. Of course, nobody wants to admit that they are wrong. Who wants to be wrong??? If I dont get out of this bad trade (that has very little potential), it will eat away at my past and future winning trades. And obviously, I dont want anything to eat away at my winning trades. I try and think about it a different way. I dont think about it as being wrong in a losing trade. I decided to shift my thinking and instead of thinking of myself as wrong in a losing trade, I think about it this way: If I dont get out of this bad trade (that has very little potential), it will eat away at my past and future winning trades. And obviously, I dont want anything to eat away at my winning trades. This helps me be more flexible and not afraid to cover my losing trades or trades where the profit is deteriorating. Ive learned to be flexible in these situations because of how much I want to keep my winning trades intact. The less flexible I am about my bad trades, the more theyll eat away at my good trades. Im always trying to protect those winning trades because those trades are the ones that pay my bills each month. Always remember the more flexible you can be, the more successful your trading will be. In fact, the amount of money you make trading will be in direct proportion to how flexible you can be. If that is not a reason to learn to be more flexible, I dont know what one would be. DO YOU DESERVE TO MAKE MONEY? Like we talked about in Chapter 3, many people have a certain idea of how long and how much effort it takes to make a certain amount of money. Most job situations offer an unchanging reward regardless of effort. This is very different than trading the markets. Most of us are brought up with ideas like working a hard days work is what it takes to make money. Very few of us are brought up with the idea that you can make literally thousands of dollars in a matter of minutes with very little expended effort other than picking up the phone and placing a timely trade. This is foreign to most people. And, more importantly, it doesnt fit the picture most people have of themselves. For instance, if your father worked 11 hours a day, 6 days a week to put food on your familys table, then its only natural that your idea of making money would include hard work and long hours. You spent much of your childhood seeing it done that way. Because of that, the picture of yourself could most likely be one that is undeserving of money if you dont put in long, hard hours to make that money. If that is the case, then this picture of yourself is very, very important. The picture you have of yourself is the basis of the psycho-cybernetics techniques, which well talk a lot about in Section 3 of this book. But let me just to give you some background of how it works. The self-image controls everything we do in life. It is what we believe to be true about ourselves. It may not necessarily be true, but it is what we believe to be true. We all have a picture of ourselves in our subconscious. This picture is called the selfimage. The self-image controls everything we do in life. It is what we believe to be true about ourselves. It may not necessarily be true, but it is what we believe to be true. Our self-image has a stronger hold on us than you could ever imagine. For instance, if we believe that people dont deserve to make money as fast as is possible trading the markets, then undoubtedly what will happen if we make money very quickly in the market is our self-image will say, This is not right, people shouldnt make money this fast. And our powerful subconscious will find a way to give that money right back. It is inevitable that it will happen this way. It is very difficult to do something consistently that does not agree with your selfimage. Its proven in hundreds of thousands of scientific cases. A good example is someone trying to lose weight. Many times people have the picture of themselves as an overweight person. They attempt to try and lose weight using willpower. They go to the gym, try and eat healthier foods and avoid fatty foods. All that is great. But the reason most people cant lose weight (or they gain it right back) is because they have that powerful picture of themselves as an overweight person fighting against them. The self-image is much stronger than any willpower you can come up with. So, until they change the picture they see of themselves, it will be next to impossible to lose weight and keep it off. But when they do change the picture of themselves, it wont be very difficult at all to lose weight and keep it off. In other words, when they can see themselves as a thin person, its not very difficult to become a thin person. The same is true about whether you deserve to make money as a trader. If you have a self-image that states it isnt right to be able to make money so quickly, then you will be fighting a losing battle against your powerful self-image. The self-image will always win. Just like the person trying to lose weight, you will only become successful when you have the correct picture of yourself. The picture must be of a person who is deserving of making money in the trading environment. If that is not the picture you currently have of yourself, youll need to change that picture. The Psycho-Cybernetics techniques in Section 3 will teach you how to change the picture you have of yourself so you will be deserving of making money with your trading. |
|
|||||||||||||||
Previous Issues
|
| ©2007 Olesia | Home • My photos • Forex • News • My trading • Contacts |