Mind set. Something I have been thinking about a lot lately. It is said that what we believe, what we think about constantly, often becomes our reality. Thus if we spend our thoughts on the positive things that we want from life and ourselves, we are often rewarded by attaining these things in ways that we never knew were possible. It sort of just, happens.
That’s kind of new age and airy-fairy, and you may be wondering why I’m talking like a hippie and what it has to do with trading! The short answer is that I think it has everything to do with trading. I’m not saying that if we sit and daydream about how the market is going to make us rich in about 10 seconds flat by doing what would best suit us and our current open positions is the magic formula. I mean, it would be nice if it was, but what I am saying is that the way in which we think while we are trading is what makes us as traders.
It’s about feedback loops. We need to create a mind set for ourselves in which we fundamentally accept that absolutely anything is possible at any given moment, and that we will always be presented with an opportunity to act in our own best interest. That’s a really long sentence. Basically when we stay in a mind set that fosters the belief that no matter what happens, it’s an opportunity for us to make a decision that will benefit us in future, we start to make better quality decisions.
We need to hold a positive expectation to the outcomes of the decisions that we make, although at the same time we need to be able to very quickly accept if the decision that we have made was the wrong one. In other words, we need to think like winners in order to be winners. If we get a trade wrong, we need to let it go and move onto the next trade without fear or hesitation. I’m not saying we should be reckless and shoot from the hip, but I am saying that when we fundamentally believe in our ability to be consistently profitable, we won’t get too caught up in the negativity that surrounds an unfavourable outcome to any particular trade.
Every outcome that we receive is a lesson that is available to us to learn, and in that is an opportunity for us to get better at what we are doing, which leads us to becoming – or staying – consistently profitably traders.
So here’s to an optimistic, opportunistic and flexible mind set!
Petri Redelinghuys
View our psychology of trading video here.
