Meet Claire and Chloe Gruenke. They are 13 year old twins. Both of them compete in track for their junior high school in Illinois.
A few months ago, both were in a track meet when Chloe felt something ‘pop’ in her leg and fell down. Trying to complete the race, Chloe tried to get up, but she couldn’t run, let alone walk.
At this time her sister Claire, realizing Chloe was physically unable to complete the race on her own, did something extraordinary.
Instead of calling for help, she put Chloe on her back and kept on running for the finish line. There was no chance either of them was going to come in any place but dead last. Yet Claire ran with her sister on her back.
Right before crossing the finish line, Claire gently let her sister down and told her to cross the line first. Chloe saw the bigger picture, and they crossed at the same time.
This is an amazing example of losing the race, but winning at life. It is also reflective of something which plagues developing traders – dealing with excuses when facing obstacles.
Excuses & Your Trading Mindset
When it comes to trading, what is the most damaging part of the excuses you make? Is it the fact you missed an opportunity pull the trigger on a winning trade? No. Is it that you didn’t fill out your training journal and learned from your trading mistakes? No.
The most damaging part about making excuses when it comes to forex trading, is how they affect your self-image. Every time you make an excuse, and then act upon said excuse, you communicate something which dis-empowers you.
Each excuse you give and act upon sends a message to your self-image of how weak it is, how unable you are to accomplish something, and ultimately where your level of ability is at.
This is incredibly damaging because our self-image is one of the greatest determinants for our performance and level of trading success. With each an every excuse we make, we not only stunt the growth of our self-image, but concurrently shrink it.
Excuses Affecting Performance
We all have the goal to become a successful profitable trader. When we parse out an excuse as the reason why we didn’t do something, we lower our self-confidence, particularly in our ability to follow through. When we don’t follow through (even though we recognize our ability & potential), we experience frustration which affects our performance negatively.
Products Of…
In most cases, excuses are a product of two things;
1) Lack of Proper Motivation
2) Unspecified Goals
If you aren’t properly motivated to trade profitably, or do not know the underlying reasons for your motivations, your unconscious mind & limiting beliefs will subvert your efforts to do the hard things when it comes time.
This lack of completing what you set out to do can often be a reflection of being unmotivated. It is only when your motivation becomes larger than the energy of your excuses, is the moment you start to see forward progress in your efforts and training to accelerate your learning curve.
Also, having unspecified trading goals leaves you with no clear endgame, and thus motivational underpinning to trade successfully.
Easy to Produce
It will always be easier to produce excuses any time we fail to do something or reach our goal. We will always have moments when we are tired, do not feel 100%, lack inspiration, had a bad day trading, don’t have the money, the time, the genes, the experience, and the list goes on…
All of the above can be manufactured in a second and take no effort at all.
Before 6am & -40 degrees F
I cannot say I truly like getting up just before 6am every day. Sometimes it feels great, and sometimes I’m tired as all hell. In those latter moments, it is hard to get up, and quite easy to stay in bed.
Luckily, I’ve had various ‘trainings‘ since I was young (soccer, martial arts, yoga, meditation, forex trading) which conditioned me to ‘just do it‘. Getting up when it was -40F at the age of 11 during a Chicago winter wasn’t fun by any means. But working towards a goal and accomplishing something for my day was 99% of the time far better then doing nothing.
It’s true – getting up that one day wasn’t going to make me a professional trader, martial artist, or soccer player. But each step was both building my skills, while increasing my self-image. Do this enough times and eventually you feel like you can overcome almost any obstacle.
Common Amongst Successful Traders & People
One thing you will notice amongst highly successful traders and people, is when they come up against an excuse, they look for ways to get past them and complete their task. Their long term vision is far more important than their short term discomfort.
They are solution focused, thus constantly turning their minds towards finding an answer. This solution based focus, while being focused on the process helps to improve brain performance and wire your brain for success.
Successful traders and people do not leave much space for excuses to enter. Even when they do surface, they are usually met with discipline, focus and a forward moving momentum excuses usually fold under.
Overcoming Is…
Remember, overcoming is the currency of success. Thus it is very important you are solution focused when facing your challenges, instead of allowing your challenges to transform into excuses.
In 95+% of all situations, you are in control of ‘you’. Hence the underlying reason you haven’t done what was needed, was because of something YOU chose to do (or not to do).
Once you realize how much you are in control, there are fundamentally no more excuses to give as you determine your reality more than any other agent.
Going back to Chloe & Claire, Claire was less worried about winning the race, and more focused on finding a solution.
She communicated to everyone on that track, there are always ways to finish the race. She wouldn’t let any excuse into the situation. She showed us all something great about humanity, of what we could be if we let go of excuses, and directed our minds towards solutions.
Unable to run, Chloe still finished the race, and Claire wouldn’t let it happen otherwise. She had the mentality of ‘No-Obstacle‘, which is one of the most powerful mentalities you can have in trading and life.
Every time you face an obstacle or excuse, but overcome it – you increase your self-confidence and self-image. This is one of the most effective ways to build a successful trading mindset.
In Closing
Excuses are some of the most damaging things to your mindset and trading success. They reduce your self-image, which must be strong to trade successfully.
By learning to see what excuses are, and discover how much we can actually control them, we give ourselves the potential to transform obstacles into growth, and excuses into determination.
In reality, although there are great mountains like Mt. Everest & K2, the greatest mountain we will ever climb is our own mind, and our own challenges.
For those who can and do scale such mountains, you will find yourself standing atop all those obstacles, limitations, and challenges, which can bring a confidence to last you a lifetime. It is in that moment that you will see the great expanse, and what’s available to you.
Tag Archive for: accelerating your learning curve
One of the best things you can do to accelerate your learning curve is to do simulation trading. There will be times the market is slow, or you don’t have setups. If your only training is watching videos, and making trades in the market, then your learning curve comes to a halt when there are no setups. This is where forex simulation trading comes in.
In this video, we discuss how you can use Forex Tester 2 to accelerate your learning curve and build your skill set.
For those wanting to get the $50 forex trade simulator discount, you can get this and order by clicking on the link Forex Tester 2 $50 Discount
Let’s face it – not everyone has the ability to sit down for hours a day building their trading skills. Many of you have full time jobs, families, etc., yet still want to participate in the market.
If this is you, I generally recommend using forex set and forget trading strategies to trade the market. This is done by using rule based systems for to find your entries, exits, stops, & take profit levels. The ‘rules’ save you time as you just have to spot the conditions for a legitimate setup, then put in your order.
The problem is, the more popularized version of this ‘set it and forget it‘ investing style is to set your trades and then ‘walk away’. Perhaps you go read a book, golfing, or hang out on the beach. This is a completely ridiculous idea which actually harms your learning curve.
In this article, I’m going to share the major flaw in set it and forget it forex investing, then explain how you can accelerate your learning curve.
Walking Away – The Major Flaw
Let’s say you only have 2 hours per day to analyze & trade the market. According to the more popularized version of ‘walking away’, you spend say 30 mins to find your setups, put your trades in, then do something else.
Why does this harm your learning curve? Because you already have two hours set aside for trading. If you walk away after 30 minutes, you are missing out on 1.5 hours of screen time and an opportunity to build your skills.
I know what you are thinking – if you have no more trade setups, why sit at the charts?
Wow – great idea. So if I’m not actually in a golf tournament – I shouldn’t practice my golf swing? If I’m not playing a live baseball game, I shouldn’t go to the batting cage, or work on drills, or throws? Ridiculous – and I hope you can see this as well.
What You Can Do Differently
Perhaps your strategy trading pin bars with trend. You have no more setups for the day as you’ve put in your one trade. Does that mean you cannot increase your screen time or learning process? No, have two hours, so USE IT. How so?
Get Trade Interceptor or Forex Tester 2 where you can go back historically to any point in time & trade price action doing live forward simulation testing. Trading pin bars with trend, open up a daily chart several years back on your favorite or weakest pair. In testing mode, it will move the actual bars at a speed workable for you & of your choice.
Anytime you have a pin bar setup that meets your qualifications – trade it the way you normally would your real system. This will give you both increased reps and screen time – both of which will enhance your learning curve. In an hour of live forward simulation trading, you could actually trade 30-50+ pin bars.
What will this do? It will;
a) Enhance your pattern recognition skills
b) Build neural networks in your brain to recognize high probability setups using your strategy
c) Give you more practice and execution using your method, which will
d) When it comes to live trading, increase the chance you just pull the trigger with less emotions or analysis paralysis
By Comparison
What does the person who ‘walks away’ from their computer, gain during their remaining time? Nothing! They build no screen time, have weaker neural circuits for making trading decisions or pulling the trigger, let alone pattern recognition skills.
Yet the trader who practices that extra 1.5 hours doing live forward simulation trading will improve at a much faster rate.
A Top Professional
Just recently, I got a perfect reinforcement of this from a top professional. Peyton Manning is one of the best quarterbacks in this generation – perhaps top 10 of all time. He’s 37 and is still playing at a top level.
Yesterday he was in a high intensity back and forth game that went down to the last two minutes to decide the winner. He’d score – then the other team would score, quarter after quarter, both taking the lead at some point. He just scored the 4th touchdown of the day to take an 11 point lead. What was he doing right after this? Take a look at the photo below.
Is he ‘walking away‘ watching the time go by till his next drive? Nope. What is he doing?
Looking at the plays they just made on the winning drive. He’s looking at the formation of the opposing defense, analyzing what he could exploit, what mistakes they are making, etc. This is maximizing your time.
He’s one of the best ever, yet he’s not ‘walking away‘ from the game. He’s engaging in it every moment he can, looking for patterns, reviewing plays, looking to spot what he missed earlier.
This is what you should be doing if you are trading set and forget strategies – using every moment you have. Each practice trade you do on Forex Tester 2 is like an extra lap on the track. Who do you think gets faster and more conditioned? The person who does 2-3 laps per week, or the runner who does 30+ a day? Rhetorical question – but had to ask.
So don’t be a ‘lazy trader’ and just ‘walk away’ as you’re just losing valuable screen time to do more laps. Utilize your time to the max. Trading, is just like any skill as you need practice, lots of screen time, & a successful mindset.
By doing using your time doing live simulation testing and reviewing trades, you are accelerating your learning curve, creating stronger neural networks for trading, and building screen time which is critical to trading success.