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You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
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You'll want to visualize how your trading statement looks in your minds eyeSTATEMENT EQUITY INCREASE This is a visualization exercise Ive been using for years. In my opinion, it is extremely effective. The idea here is to visualize the equity (money) in your account continually rising. This is a very simple exercise and should be done on a daily basis. EXERCISE 1) Get in a relaxed state with the relaxation technique Calm Body, Calm Mind. 2) You'll want to visualize how your trading statement looks in your minds eye. The best way to do this is to actually look at your trading statement and then be able to see it in your minds eye. 3) If you receive an actual hard copy (paper) statement, notice how the paper feels in your hand. See your name and account number at the top. See the brokerage companys name at the top. Notice the trades from the previous day on your statement. See all the details of your statement in your minds eye. If you receive your trading statement through email, then picture it on your computer screen. Its important that you see your statement (in the theater of your mind) exactly how you actually see it in real life. 4) Now I want you to take your daily goal. Lets say for this exercise our daily goal is to make $500 each day. We want to visualize our daily goal being added to the previous days statement. So, for instance, lets say yesterday my account has $7,200 in it. Today I want to visualize my account statement after making my goal of $500. So I will see in the theater of my mind my account having $7,700 in it today. 5) But thats not enough just to see the increase in equity. We must see more details for it to feel real to us. We need to see the trades that made us the $500. So, while youre looking at your statement in your minds eye, you must also see the trades that made you the $500 or whatever goal you have. 6) These trades can be made up or can be trades that youve had in the past. In fact, what will work best is if you have had actual days where youve made your goal. I would then use those days as your mental practice. Relive the feelings youve had after the day (where you made your goal) and feel those winning feelings again. See yourself looking at your statement and feel the satisfying feeling of a profitable trading day. Remember to try and feel those winning feelings that you had when youve had good trading days. That feeling will be very important to reprogramming your success mechanism. 7) If you havent had any winning days, thats O.K. Just use a time in your life when you were successful at something and clearly remember that right before you change the scene to your trading statement. Then just make up the trades. Remember, your subconscious cant tell the difference between a real experience and a vividly imagined one. So it will be better if you can use a real experience, but a vividly imagined experience will work well too. This exercise is best done in the morning before the market opens. You need to see yourself reaching your goal as clearly as possible. After doing this for a while, it will help your powerful subconscious to reach your goal. Believe it or not, doing this exercise will help you avoid making trading mistakes because your mind will be clearly focused on your goal. Thus, if you are about to make a trading mistake, your subconscious (if properly trained) will override your thought process and help you avoid the mistake in the first place. But this will only work if you practice it enough and can clearly see the pictures in your minds eye. It wont happen overnight, but it will happen with daily practice. PULLING THE TRIGGER EXERCISE The reason people cant pull the trigger when they sense an opportunity happens for one reason and one reason only. They are afraid! But they are not afraid of the market, they are afraid of themselves. Their fear comes from not having complete trust in themselves to act in their own best interest. You fear your inability to do what you need to do, when you need to do it, without hesitation. Being afraid causes us to freeze up and makes us unable to pull the trigger (to execute our trades.) This causes missed opportunities. But the end result of these missed opportunities is the real problem of not being able to pull the trigger. After we miss an opportunity (because we are afraid), we play the scenario in our minds in a very unrealistic way. For example, lets say we wanted to get long the market. The opportunity comes up for us to get in the market, but our fear prevents us from pulling the trigger, so we do nothing. Then the worst possible thing happens (in our minds). The market then rallies and we start counting the money that we are missing out on because we didnt pull the trigger. If the market moves our way 500 points, we think that we should have had that 500 points. We do this whether it is realistic or not. This is the failure mechanism hard at work. This kind of thinking is very harmful to our trading in the future. We mentally beat ourselves up for missing the trade, and we feel like we lost the money that we would have made if wed gotten in on the trade. We get mad at ourselves. We call ourselves stupid or an idiot. We play the trade over and over in our minds thinking about the things we did wrong. This is just like the visualizing techniques weve been talking about. The only difference here is you are visualizing yourself doing the wrong thing. By continually thinking of yourself as a person who cant pull the trigger, you are reinforcing that idea in your subconscious. All of this is very destructive and makes things much worse. So we need an exercise to help us pull the trigger when we see a trading opportunity. We need to get past the fear that is causing us to freeze up and not to pull the trigger. And we definitely want to avoid visualizing or continually thinking about the mistakes weve made and the opportunities weve missed. We cant change the past, only the future. EXERCISE 1) Get in a relaxed state with the relaxation technique Calm Body, Calm Mind. 2) In this exercise, we want to visualize ourselves being able to pull the trigger without hesitation when we see an opportunity or when its time to get out of a trade. 3) Go into the theater of your mind and first playback (with detail) times when youve pulled the trigger as soon as youve seen a trading opportunity. Remember to see the details. See yourself watching the charts and seeing the opportunity. You see the green light go off in your head and you dont hesitate. You pick up the phone, hit the speed dial button, and place your order. (Can you feel how the phone feels in your hand? Notice how you feel sitting in your chair watching the screen.) 4) See the trade going your way. Feel the feelings you have had when youve seen an opportunity and jumped on it. Feel how you felt when you did not hesitate and were able to pull the trigger without hesitation. 5) If you havent had trades where you were comfortable pulling the trigger, than try this: Remember a time when you did something and you were comfortable with it when its hard for others. For instance, maybe you are a good negotiator and youre not afraid to ask for a lower price when others wouldnt be confident. Remember that time vividly and feel those confident feelings. Or maybe you are a person who is good at fixing things and wouldnt hesitate tackling a big fix-it job. You would obviously feel very confident that you could get the job done correctly. Then switch the scene in your minds eye back to the trading situation and see yourself pulling the trigger at the right time. Its O.K. to make up the situation as long as you have the confident feeling first and you are seeing the pictures in your mind vividly with detail. You must get those confident feelings first. 6) Also see yourself liquidating this trade when you feel the time is right. See the details clearly. See yourself clearly calling up and getting out of the trade. Or, if you trade through your computer, see yourself hitting the correct keys to liquidate the trade. Feel the confident feelings you get from having a successful trade. 7) Again, its important that you do these exercises on a daily basis. They will not work after just one day. You didnt become afraid to pull the trigger in just one day, so you cant expect to fix that problem in just one day either. Also, these exercises work better if you do them at the same time each day. 8) This mental practice will reprogram your self-image. After several weeks of practice, if you feel the confident feelings, your inability to pull the trigger will be a thing of the past. Important Note: Attempting to do these exercises right after a losing trade or a bad day will not work. Its very unlikely youll be able to get relaxed enough for the visualization process to work if you are upset or mad at yourself. I would suggest only doing these exercises when you are in a relaxed state. Trying to do them when you are aggravated will not get you anywhere and will simply turn you off from continuing to do them in the future. If youve had a bad day, I would suggest giving yourself some time before you do the exercises. The term time heals all wounds is very true here. If you give yourself some time to calm down (a day, an hour, whatever), you will be in a much better position to relax and then really get some benefit from these exercises. |
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