How To Stop Revenge Trading

One topic that is the common cause of frustration and failure among traders is the “Revenge Trade”, the action of “going on tilt” as we call it in professional circles. I call this “Binge Trading”, because the experience of going on tilt is similar to mindlessly ravening a whole block of chocolate and then waking up in surprise that it’s all gone… just like that.

Revenge Trading is one of the most complaint about trading mistakes, and any trader who has experienced the subsequent feelings of frustration, anger, and disappointment, know how debilitating it can be for one’s trading career.

In my experience, this is one of the main self-sabotaging patterns that eventually lead to failure as a trader, or as one of my traders described once: “it is as if I have the compulsion to keep punching myself in the face, over and over again and don’t know how to stop”.

Anatomy of a Revenge Trade

Following is the story of an US Trader who recently went full time daytrading the ES.

“This morning I got to my computer a little late, as I was stuck in traffic from dropping the kids off to school. But I thought I was well prepared, as I had scanned the markets and analysed my top charts the night before. So, on my way to the office I started formulating my trading plan for the day.

I have had a great month so far, with 2 weeks continuous profitable days and so I felt confident and happy because it was my best performing month so far. I took my first trade right at the opening and it went straight into profit.

The thing about the ES is that the morning price action is usually quite strong and directional. But suddenly price started stalling and even though my target was far higher with the stalling price action I started doubting myself and wondered if I should take my profits and run.

So I took my profits and the ES after a little pause, picked up and continued to run – without me..

I could feel the frustration creeping up, why did I give in to the pressure and get out? Why was I so weak? Determined to make up for it, I jumped right back into the trade with double the contract size, and of course I bought the top tick and from here on price just kept collapsing.

To make things even worse, instead of taking my 1% stop loss, I did the opposite: I ranted at myself, I squirmed in my chair, whilst at every sign of a bottoming pattern on the 5 min chart adding another long position, hoping to average out the loss.. but it just got worse, I could feel my confidence waning and my frustration turned into paralysing fear. I started calling myself all names under the sun.

I kept telling myself, that I will get out at the next pullback, but it never pulled back. I knew I had to exit this trade, but I just couldn’t get myself to press that mouse button and so instead of exiting I mindlessly added positions, promising to exit at the next breach of the support level, but then just helplessly watching my account balance evaporate with each flush down. Eventually I was so over-leveraged that I literally could feel every tick like a sharp stab in my body.. it was so painful..

Also, because my trade was based on my impulsivity, jumping into the trade for fear of missing out fuelled by the frustration of having exited too early instead of letting my trade plan play out, I didn’t really have any clarity around when to exit my losing positions. Like a dog with a bone I was stubborn keeping adding to the wrong bias fighting myself and the tape instead of switching my bias and going with the flow.”

The Pain Of Regret

Now you finally got out of this trade.. either the broker made the decision for you or the pain of the loss has become bigger than the regret and you finally managed to press that damn mouse button.

Your thoughts are trapped, racing in your head, your heart is pounding and you are feeling almost sick to your tummy. You can’t sleep.. the self-berating gets worse.. “How could I have been so stupid” “When will I stop doing this?” “I know how to trade, I am a good trader, if only I could stop this one behavior!” “I am such a loser” “I feel so stupid” and on and on we go judging and berating and victimising ourselves until we fall into a restless sleep dreaming of wild priceactions and blowing up accounts.

If only …

The next day my prop trader went back to the firm. He was disappointed and angry with himself, the ES and life. It’s just not fair he kept thinking .. I know how to trade, I am a good trader, why do I keep going on tilt and destroy all my profits when I am so close to success?

When he went over the botched trade from the day before, he wanted to slap himself… it all seemed so clear now, why on earth did he buy when there was such a clear reversal pattern right on the top? Why did he keep adding to his long positions, when the patterns he read as reversal patterns are clearly continuation patterns? How could he been such an idiot?

‘If only’ is what traders utter a lot.

  • If only I had gotten taken the loss. I should have gotten out when I first thought about getting out.

  • If only I had stayed with my analysis and let the trade run into profit target rather than micro managing.

  • If only I had put more size on. I should be more aggressive.

  • If only I had taken my profits. I should stop being so greedy.

  • If only I had taken my losses when they were still small

  • If only …..

This is the battle all of us traders fight within ourselves. That’s why, in order to succeed in trading, it’s not only the markets we have to conquer, but mostly ourselves.

The Aftermath

The story didn’t end here.. now my trader felt he needed to make the money back, quickly. But his confidence has been thoroughly shaken up, his self-belief has taken a big hit, and he was so plagued with self-doubt that no trade looked good enough to enter.

Developing the skill of trading, whilst of course it takes a few years depending on your already pre-existing skillset and mindset, is relatively easy and with good mentoring, traders can speed up the process of becoming a competent trader.

Becoming an extraordinary trader who achieves financial freedom however comes from developing ‘Behavioural Mastery’: Behavioural Mastery starts with a high level of self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, developing emotional intelligence, training to make fast decisions, building resilience, mental toughness and cognitive dominance.

Warren Buffet’s Key to Success

Warren Buffett famously said “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ….The key to success is emotional stability”.

 

What is emotional stability?

When I as a coach assess the emotional stability of a trader, the scale stretches from extreme neuroticism to highly emotionally stable.

Emotional stability refers to a trader’s ability to remain stable, calm, focused and able to think strategically even in the face of uncertainty and challenges. At the other end of the scale, a trader who is high in neuroticism easily experiences negative emotions that are setting the trader up for self-destructive trading behaviours such as revenge trading.

The thing is that every trader experiences those emotions, and the difference between long term successful traders and failing traders, is how quickly a trader is able to snap themselves out of this self-destructive emotional spiral.

Traders who score high in neuroticism are very emotionally reactive. They will have an emotional response disproportionate to the event. For example, I have seen traders for whom a $200 loss is enough to trigger revenge trading, self-berating and feeling defeated, whilst they may be happy enough to spend $200 on a weekend dinner and drinks out with friends.

They are feeling threatened, find it difficult to think clearly and cope with stress. My definition of stress is “Not getting what you want” or “Getting what you don’t want”.

When you are high in emotional stability, you have more control over your emotions during a trade, you will be able to focus on the task at hand and stay clear minded and have access to logical thinking under uncertainty and pressure.

Traders with low emotional stability are distracted by social media too easily, crumble under pressure, are affected by other people’s opinions, personal challenges, and general pressure and are not able to perform at optimum throttle.

3 Steps to Emotional Stability

If you want to stop Revenge Trading in it’s tracks, you must start attending to your emotional wellbeing.

Step 1: Assess where are you on the scale between neuroticism and emotional stability?

You can do one of the free ‘Big Five’ Tests freely available on the internet to get an indication of where you are at on the scale.

At the same time keep a journal for about 1 month and every day rate yourself as on a scale from 1 to 10, how much and how often you experience one of the following emotions:

  • Anxiety                                    1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

    I feel this way, because _________________________________

  • Anger                                      1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

    I feel this way, because _________________________________

  • Depression                             1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

    I feel this way, because _________________________________

  • Frustration                              1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

    I feel this way, because _________________________________

  • Disappointed                          1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

    I feel this way, because _________________________________

  • Hopeless                                1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10

    I feel this way, because _________________________________

Traders who frequently suffer from Revenge trading or similar self-defeating trading behaviors are usually high in neuroticism. If that is you, don’t worry, simply proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Step into your power and start working on your emotional stability

If you are high in neuroticism, you will most probably also be highly stressed, or even struggling with life in general. If that is you, there is some work to be done so that you can make it a rewarding trading career.

Learn how to manage your stress. What is it that you are afraid of? What is it that you are trying to avoid happening?

Traders who go on trading binges, just like binge eating or drinking, have not learned to self-soothe when they feel fear based emotions. Every trader experiences moments of fear, disappointment etc, it is how quickly you can snap yourself out of it, look forward and get ready for the next trade, that differentiates the quality of a trader, how quickly you recover from setbacks.

I worked with a trader who used to have 3 days of binge trading.. we worked on reducing .. it became just 2 days.. we celebrated the progress, he started filtering for how he did well, his strengths, his skillset, then it became only 1 day of binge trading.. and now this behavior has been eradicated.. with celebrations each step of the way.

Step 3: Bring out Your Best Self

This is a very powerful way of thinking: Rather than focusing on how you failed again and how you are not enough, pick one skill to improve and start focusing on your progress.

How can you become the most successful version of yourself? What I found with a lot of traders who are high in neuroticism, they ‘suffer’ from a negativity bias that tend to mostly filter in seeing ourselves at our worst, so we can beat up on ourselves.

It’s really important to start shifting the mind away from negativity bias and start tapping into that part of the brain which is us at our best.

  1. Think of a time you were really at your best, when you really amazed yourself and you’re so pleased with how you conducted yourself.

  2. How do you know you were at your best? What were the strengths you brought to life or the values that you lived? What is it that led you to know that that was you being at your best?

  3. Knowing that is your best self, how can you bring that to life in your trading from now on?

In Summary ..

The problem with Revenge trading is not the revenge trade itself. The problem is that the trader is in a weak mental state to begin with and one loss or missed out profit triggers anger, frustration etc and the trader does not know how to self-soothe and snap out of this emotional rollercoaster.

If you suffer from binge trading, there is a little bit of work on yourself to be done. Don’t give up, because everyone can learn to work with their emotions in an empowered way.

tradingpsychology

 

Mandi x

Day Trading Tip 1 – Focus on your being not on your doing

Day Trading Tip 1 – Focus on your being not on your doing

 

Many measure their trading success by the state of their trading bank. Their confidence and self-worth is correlated to the $$$ profits they make.

The thing is, this is how we have been conditioned by society. You get judged by the results that your environment can see, such as good grades at school, finishing top in your university, driving a nice car, living in a nice house, being dressed for success, all those are being considered as a measure of success.

Although profits are a typical measure of success in the trading industry (just look at the amount of traders showing off their $profits on LinkedIn), and undeniably important if you have to pay the rent from trading, it can ultimately destroy your trading career.

With that outcome focused mindset, as you lose money, you lose confidence, your self-worth becomes threatened, you start making irrational trades based on impulse and desperation, you lose more money in the attempt to recover your self-worth, and so the vicious cycle of self-sabotage has been set in motion.

Have you ever asked yourself why it is that even though we live in a world with great resources at our fingertips, traders continue to struggle? There is so much information freely available on the internet, anything a trader needs to know in order to succeed, and yet the statistics still show that over 90% of traders have no trading results to show for. When profits do appear, it is exhilarating, but never long lasting.

I tell you why: Because you can want trading success until you are blue in the face, you can attend all the seminars, read all the trading books, refine your trading strategies, write the most sophisticated trading plans, follow the best traders in the world, you can accumulate so much knowledge about trading that you deserve an honorary PHD, but until you get to the core of your BEING, that emotional experience, the real root cause of why you are not doing what you planned to do, until you are clear about your unconscious sabotaging behavioural patterns, until you acknowledge that this is running your trading and learn how to transform them, your dreams of being a successful trader are going to stay fairy tales.

Let’s be real here, anytime you want to get to a place that is better than where you currently are, there are blocks inside of you, otherwise you would already be there.

So, the real question here is how do you uncover and remove the hidden blocks to achieving better trading results?

If you stand any hope to succeed in the markets, you will need to change how you think about your trading.

In the euphoria of winning most traders quickly lose their discipline and overtrade, which results in a significant drawdown.

It is devastating experience to win big only to give it all back to the market.

Most traders know that there is something wrong, but they don’t know how to fix it.

Emotional Pendulum = The Compass To Your Trading Success

We are only as strong as the weakest link in our performance. That’s whilst we should focus on our strengths we also need to learn how to manage our weaknesses.

One of my traders from the Prop Trader Training had the experience that after a run of profitable trades the point would come when he would let a loss run too long and wipe out all the profits from the winning run. “The biggest weakness that I am working through is how to apply the same process after a winning run.”

The answer to this is found in the concept of the Emotional Pendulum. (The Emotional Pendulum, and comes from the work of David Pellin, a Canadian psychotherapist from the 1960s, and Peter Fleming, who carries on Pellin’s work at the Pellin Institute in the UK.) http://www.pellin.org.uk/CTIntro/Paper1.pdf

Now, when it comes to the spectrum of emotional stability there are three extreme points on the scale: Low Negative, Neutral Centred and High Positive.

Swings of the Pendulum

David Pellin made the observation that, “the motion of emotion is like the swing of a pendulum.” A pendulum swings back and forth from high to low until it eventually rests in the centre, still and calm, until some outside event sets it off to swing across the whole spectrum once again.

Most traders tend to experience the whole spectrum from low negative to high positive but never get to rest in neutral centre. Unless they learn to manage those swings their trading results stay as inconsistent as the swings of the pendulum.

High positive relates to extreme levels of excitement, enthusiasm and happiness – a state commonly experienced after a winning run, and low negative relates to any feeling that resembles anger, sadness or even depression – a state commonly experienced after a string of losses.

When you are in a state of neutrally centered you are being fully present, focused and in a highly conscious state. That is the place from where you are able to make great trading decisions and therefore big profits consistently like clockwork.

The extent that our trading bank is going to be hurt by self-pity or smugness will depend on how far we swing on the pendulum. The further we swing to either extreme the more money we are prone to lose.

So, in the case of my prop trader, he had a great winning run, most probably started believing that he has finally made it, dreaming of the millions of dollars he will generate with trading, hearing the world cheering him on as he buys his wife the most beautiful diamonds and himself a hot Maserati. And as Donald Trump says, that is the moment when you take the eye off the ball, you fall in love with  the numbers on your bank balance, or the % return on your statistics, and suddenly your analysis starts to get sloppy and you start getting lose on your risk management because preserving the nice numbers on your statistics suddenly becomes the focus instead of working with what the market has to offer and focusing on flawless execution.

Why is that so?

The Impact of Highs and Lows

In her book ‘Molecules of Emotions’ Candice Perts explains that we have receptors in our brain – called opiate receptors, that create the signal for being high when taking drugs or drinking alcohol. And these are exactly the same receptors for our emotions. So, the receptors you have for feeling sad angry depressed happy excited or invincible are essentially the same receptors you use when you drink alcohol or take drugs.

What that means is that science is telling us that when you are experiencing an emotional state you are in fact intoxicated.

So when you are high as a kite, do you become more focused, concentrated and conscious or less? Less, right? Alcohol is a filtering system so typically you see things differently than the sober people around you. It is kind of looking at a chart in hindsight and wondering why on earth you took this trade. Even though at the time it looked so promising.

Now, just in case you don’t’ believe me: think about it, have you ever gotten completely drunk and done something stupid and then sobered up and gone – oh man, what did I do?

Or do you know anyone who was so excited that they blurred something out and then afterwards they are like oh no, I can’t believe I said that?

And on the flipside, has anyone ever been so angry they have done or said something totally inappropriate and then you ‘sober up’ get back to neutral and you go oh man what was I doing?

And the same occurs in trading: have you ever entered a trade on impulse and immediately thought to yourself: Oh no, what did I do that for? Stupid question, of course you did, we all have.

Swing to the Lows

The negative low area of the pendulum is the result of emotional depletion triggered by already evident low self-image or physical or physical depletion and exhaustion because having concentrated over a long period of time willpower gets eroded as well. The low is then usually intensified by subsequent trading losses and frustration.

In the negative low your emotions are turning inwards. Twisting and turning on each other, becoming convoluted, with the mental sabotage that you are alone with these emotions, with these problems and that solutions are not possible. Many stay stuck in the negative low focusing on the imperfectability of oneself, the impossibility of ever achieving ones dream and becoming a successful trader.

In the low, you can only be aware of yourself as a failure or a victim. In the low, your mind convinces us that this is the truth.

If your low is sufficiently deep, you can turn a genuine trading loss into a sincere belief that you have serious problems with self-sabotage, or that you are just not cut out to be a trader..

You need to have an awareness of the process that is happening. When you are low your thinking will be clouded and your decision making impaired. So it is important to find ways that lead back to neutral centred where you can operate with crystal clarity and laser like objectivity.

Swing to the Highs

After a string of successful trades the un-self-aware trader is swinging high compulsively, they often feel invincible and can hardly bear to be interrupted in their trading. This is often obvious to the outside observer but not to the trader himself. I call this state Super(wo)man syndrome.

The energy rush towards the compulsive high takes away your ability to be logical, calm and diligent. Your focus shifts back to wanting more of the good feeling, getting attached to the nice numbers on your trading stats or your bank balance and so you shift away from focusing on flawless execution of your trading system which might spoil the nice numbers. You start rushing, short cutting the process intoxicated by that feel good feeling of the last win.

Similarly, if you have a string of losses, you don’t like it and that leads to you not wanting to feel that unpleasant feeling and so you try to force your way out by taking second rate trading setups which in the end just leads to more losses and quickly you once again feel stuck in a vicious circle.

In both cases your focus shifts away from flawless execution of your trading system.

When you are being highly positive, then your brain will block out 50% of your reality to remain positive, excited and happy. Your objectivity is clouded, you only see great trade setups but the Super(wo)man filter doesn’t let through the warning signs that the great setup might fail because the focus has shifted from diligent execution to feeding the addiction for that feel good sensation.

And that is the reason why after a string of winners traders often get a really bad trade. Consequently after the exaltation of the high they skid to the opposite side of the spectrum, feeling sad and depressed.

Now the same thing happens again. The sadness filter is now filtering out all the positive things in your trading reality in order to maintain that perspective. You can’t remember past good trading results, you don’t see the progress you have made over the years and you feel you will never make it. All you can see is your dreams floating away and with every losing trade you pick you essentially become a losing trade magnet.

I mean, think about it, how do you pick trades when you are in a highly excited state? You are blinded by the promise of riches and good and you will ignore every possible warning sign that the trade is about to turn into a bad loss? Traders who are already progressed with their self-awareness or mindfulness work actually report that they have fleeting thoughts such as I should stop now or I don’t know it doesn’t feel right or similar thoughts but didn’t listen to them.

And then sure enough low and behold it all turns to crap.

Or have you ever seen a great trade setup and were so pessimistic and thought this will never work, so you don’t take it and then that was the trade the trade of the day? Anyone relate to that? Of course you do..

And then the next trade sets up and because you missed out the last time you jump in and low and behold the trade once again turns to crap. And now the vicious circle has begun you now stop following your strategy but try to force things and everything just gets worse and you start doubting yourself once again, if you will ever make it.

This all only happens when you are operating from either end of the emotional pendulum. Moving back into a neutral calm mind, perhaps you can now see that the market conditions have changed or that all you need to do is refocus on a flawless execution of your strategy, and that losses are just part of the business expense and that even the best traders have a bad day that it might be uncomfortable yet ordinary and part of any professional trader’s life.

Perhaps in the neutral centered state you can draw on the deep knowledge that you had great trades in the past and that the good times will come and go as the bad streaks come and go.

When you are in neutral centered, you have all of these amazing things happening to you. There is no more self-talk going on, there is just watching the charts and quiet observation, no frowning, no biting lips, no grinding teeth, just purpose, grace and ease.

Your true strength as a trader lies in your awareness of where you are on the scale of your emotional pendulum after each trade and then quickly readjust before taking the next trade. The good news is anyone can learn to avoid those extreme highs around which your trading accounts and egos get hurt.

Within the neutral centered-ness of calm lies your incredible ability to recuperate, adapt, to keep going in the fact of surprising change.

I promote mindful consciousness in trading, because the more mindful and conscious you become the faster you are able to move back to the neutral centred calm state and the more your results will improve.

Now, who is up for making more money with trading? Of course, seems pretty obvious, it’s everyone, that’s why you are reading this.

Your Trading Success is possible equal to the amount of your EMOTIONAL MATURITY

Happy New Year and let’s make 2019 all it, we and our trading, can be…

Many traders tell me how much they love trading and yet they are in so much pain about it.

They believe if they can get over of their painful emotions, then they can become disciplined and patient, they will be able to become consistently profitable.

But it is not the emotions that are destructive to your trading success. It is your ‘EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY’ that is causing self-sabotaging behavioural patterns.

What is emotional reactivity? Following is a checklist with some examples. Time to get real and check how it shows up in your life! If you display any of these patterns of emotional reactivity in your day to day life, there is a high likelihood it will spill over into your trading life. Trading really is just a mirror of life in general.

Okay, so here we go:

Being ‘hooked’ by trading so that it is all that you think about (obsessive much? Addictive behaviour is not restricted to drinking a bottle of wine every night or guzzling a whole block of chocolate in one go – even if they say that you absorb less calories when eating a whole block :-p. Addictive behaviour can lead to overtrading and trying to ‘force’ trades)

Wanting trading to be easy and perfect, resenting any challenges that come up (did you read too many fairy tales? Interesting enough many of my successful traders lean in and strive on the challenge of it rather than trying to avoid it)

Feeling ‘triggered’ when things don’t go your way (control freak much? Starting to roll on the floor and stamp your feet like a little kid?)

Feeling perpetually the victim and at the mercy of others / events (are you at the cause or at the effect of your life?)

Feeling overwhelmed too often and out of proportion to the event (having an unexpected expense is an inconvenience.. it is not life threatening! Neither is a trading loss…)

Blaming others (yes.. those mean twitter gurus who said you should go short when you knew the market is a long, and not to mention those pesky brokers.. lol)

Justifying why things are the way they are (I just want my trading to be simple! yeah.. me too .. but trading is not simple.. the world of finance is complex with many pieces of the puzzle to it and I love the challenge of it!)

Holding on to what is rather than looking for how to change (I can’t possibly look at other markets, even if they may be more suitable for my personality and skillset. Intermarket Analysis? Too complicated… yet so useful to improve your trading results)

Being more worried about what people think than doing what needs to be done (If I take that loss then my wife will think I am wasting our money, and then … )

Having to have the same things repeated to you, and be reminded of your responsibilities, and then resenting the reminders. If you are not responsible in other areas of your life, there is a high possibility you will not be responsible with your trading. (make a list of all the ‘messes’ in your life. A mess is like a lock on the gates to abundance, as in the back of your mind you will always be pre-occupied with it and so using up valuable brainpower) — Being dramatic, sulking, emotionally withdrawing (even though it gives a feeling of importance, the illusion of being in control and temporarily makes you feel better, you are doomed to missing out on the the trade that could have made all the losses back.. )

Expecting others to be endlessly patient with you

Being upset when someone stops trusting you, when you have not been trustworthy

Assuming your emotions are more important than anyone else’s (no one understands me .. boohoo) — Discounting or being oblivious to how someone else may feel, esp when you let them down

Avoiding dealing with the realities of life (safe vs risky problem – hedging a losing trade rather than closing it out in the hope not needing to take the loss, but somehow struggling your way out of it – rarely works, lol, I tried it.. )

Trading Success really is MASTERY of your mind, and your emotions (note: it is NOT the absence of emotions!). Stuff is happening all the time. There will always be a challenge. There will always be a problem. There will always be a setback. You will always stuff up in some area. If we’re emotionally reactive to all of this, trading success is, to say the least, elusive.

We must practice the art of EMOTIONAL MATURITY. Stuff WILL happen – be prepared for it. We CAN choose to deal with it constructively. With a reminder to ourselves that stuff was always going to happen, so don’t be so surprised /disappointed /shattered /dramatic.

Sulking. Anger. Drama. Blame. Giving up. Like somehow the world is going to suddenly stop and go: You’re right! Of course you’re the victim in this! So sorry! Of course you don’t have to grow. Or ask anything of yourself. Or be thoughtful. Or hear feedback. Or act with maturity and grace.

Just stay emotionally immature and reactive to everything and let the Universe magically make life easier for you (yes, you are special..), so you don’t ever get triggered and life stays full of unicorns and fairies and trading success somehow shines upon you without you needing to deal with the challenges we all have to conquer! Which means, from now on, the world will always agree with you, pander to your every emotional outburst, apologise swiftly and expect nothing back, never ask you to do what you said you would, and never ever expect you to be a grown up.

The key is not to expect the problems to go away. It’s to be the trader who handles whatever life throws at you, in the face of fear, in the face of disappointment, despite the unfairness of it. Jim Rohn already said this, he might have gotten it from the bible .. or life experience.. Because we can handle whatever comes along. There is always a way. Just most of the time the way leads outside of what we already know.

Practice mindfulness. Being present and aware of your habitual reactions. Ask yourself: How does this reaction serve? Is there a way to react that is a response? That is, it’s reflective, thoughtful, in proportion to the event, and shows I can handle this? I can improve from this? I can do better next time?

Seek out challenges that are good quality challenges. Lack of time, money, happy relationships are not good quality challenges.. they are what we call safe problems. If you want to be a successful trader, you have to seek out good quality challenges, how can I get more skilled? How can I improve my thinking? How can I become more strategic?

Ask yourself: How can I show up right now so that my future will look the way I designed it? That I show myself I have grown? That I am making progress? That I am moving towards being a successful trader?

Emotional Reactivity versus Emotional Maturity. Trading Success really is an inside job.

Let 2019 be new choices to welcome this into our lives and our minds and hearts so that we can become the trader we are aspiring to be.

Mandi

PS: If you want to learn to Master your mind and your emotions, the Fierce 10 Trading Mindset Transformation Challenge can help.

 

The Real “Secret” to Discipline and Patience

Are you sitting on the couch watching ‘The Biggest Loser’ work out or do you get off the couch and take on the challenge by doing the workout?
(I introduce my new Your Trading Success Program: Fierce 10 Training only in the last 2 min, so if it is not of interest to you, you can just turn it off)