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: trading goals
Now that 2012 is wrapping up for traders, I’m guessing many of you (like myself) are dying to get into the new year of trading. During this time, it is a fantastic opportunity to reflect upon what successes you had last year, but also what you need to work on.
A common practice and tradition for people before the new year is to set goals or what some refer to as ‘resolutions‘. Did you know that over 80% of all New Years resolutions around losing weight or getting into shape fail? Similarly for traders, virtually the same amount of profitable accounts last year (avg. 28%) is virtually identical to the year before (avg. 26%).
Yet I’m willing to bet most of you made trading resolutions last year that were all designed to help you become successful. Being that around the same amount are, it’s safe to say these ‘resolutions’ failed, so why do you think that is?
The key is around setting proper goals, for if they are done incorrectly, you will move forward without a real plan of action, just attacking the charts hunting for profits and intraday price action setups, but no real progress towards your trading.
This article is designed to share with you an easy 5 step strategy for setting proper trading goals in 2013. This is so you can make the significant changes to your trading you feel is possible.
Step 1 – Make Your Goals Specific
If a goal is not specific, there is no way to focus on it, or take specific actions to achieve it. Your efforts become dis-coordinated towards achieving your goal, and your energy never drives home any specific change. Stating to yourself;
“I will stick with my trading method“ is too general and not specific enough.
Sure, your method may be to trade price action, or the ichimoku cloud, but that is too vague. Does this mean one system or many? Does this address risk parameters? No. Does it address the specific rules of your system? No.
You have to be specific with your goals, otherwise your efforts will be scattered and ineffective.
Although the most common goals will be numbers oriented, try to avoid these typical ones below;
I want to make a 100% gain on my account
I want to make 10% profit a month
I want to make 500 pips per month
Why?
Because you cannot know what the market will bring. You may have a goal of 20 pips per day, but what if the market is offering you 100 pips on your price action setup? Why would you not take what is offered?
Consequently, the market may have low liquidity and be in a super small 15 pip range, perhaps waiting for a big announcement. So why try and force more out of the market then what it is offering?
Focusing on performance means you may sacrifice technique to get there, and this leads to bad habits in trading which will cause greater losses down the line.
Instead, set some clear ‘process‘ oriented goals which focus on technique instead of result. If you do the technique correct, and trade following your rule based system, then you trade the system as is, and build positive habits towards trading successfully. I always suggest – focus on doing the technique correctly, and the money will come.
Some examples are;
-I will execute proper risk management targeting minimally 2x my risk on every trade
-I will stay in a winning position until my system gives me an exit signal
-I will spend 30 minutes each day preparing for my trading day, and 30 minutes reviewing my trading day
Not only are these ‘process‘ oriented goals which build positive behaviors to improve your trading, but they are specific. Instead of saying, ‘I will use ‘better‘ risk management techniques‘, they state specifically what they are. ‘Better‘ is ambiguous and hard to define, so how do you know if you achieved the goal?
Specific goals (both small and big) are critical because you direct your efforts in a specific direction where the goal is clear. Each smaller goal is simply a step on the path to a larger goal and gets you that much closer.
Step 2 – Goals Need to Be Measurable
Along the lines of goals being specific, they also need to be measurable. For example, maybe for the last year, across all your trades, you achieved a 1.5:1 reward-risk ratio for all your winners. Well, with the goal of having a 2x reward-risk ratio, this is something you can measure.
You can also challenge yourself by adding a time value beyond ‘for the year 2013‘. An example would be;
By March 1st, I will targeting nothing smaller than 2x my risk
or
By March 1st, over half of my trades winners will be 2x my risk, and the other half no less than 1.5x my risk
You may accomplish these goals earlier, but by having a goal be ‘measurable‘, it becomes a measurable indicator directly related to your goal, which will provide you with clear results and a feedback loop which communicates how you are doing, and what specifically you need to work on. You can even get specific by making smaller measurable goals which are just one step on the way up towards your bigger goals.
Step 3 – Make Your Goal Attainable
Ask yourself, ‘is your goal attainable?‘ Saying you want to achieve 70% accuracy with all your trades may be difficult if you’ve never had a year (or even month) above 50%.
The questions you have to ask yourself ‘Am I prepared, capable and have all the tools needed to achieve my goals?‘
Maybe you do not even have a rule based price action system with an edge to begin with. So how can you say you want to achieve 70% accuracy when you a) do not even have a system and b) have not tested your system on demo or live to see how it performs?
Perhaps one of your goals is to write in your trading journal every day. Well, ask yourself – do you even have a trading journal?
First figure out what you need to achieve your goals, then determine whether you have everything you need or not. A goal must be attainable, but only if you have the right tools in place.
Step 4 – Make Your Goal Realistic
It is easy to make a goal, just like it is easy to make a new years resolution. But setting a realistic goal is a completely different thing. Just like a goal needs to be attainable, having a realistic goal keeps you honest about where you are and what is workable to you without putting undue stress on yourself.
For example, using the goal, ‘I will spend 30 minutes every day preparing for my trading day‘, what if you work 9 to 5, and your trading day starts at 5:30? Maybe it takes you 15 minutes just to get home, so spending 30 minutes preparing for your trading day may not be realistic if you need to be trading at 5:30 when your price action setups form.
This is the failure of many exercise or weight goals. Saying you want to lose 50lbs in 3 months is one thing, but maybe it would be unhealthy for you to lose that much weight so quickly.
The same is for trading – make your goal realistic. If you are going to make your goal a performance number, like 1000 pips per month, yet you’ve never made over 200 pips, you may be setting yourself up for failure and disappointment which will have a negative psychological impact on your trading.
Thus, find a goal that is achievable, but will force you to work and stretch your current abilities.
Step 5 – Make Your Goal Timely
Obviously you will start working on these new goals beginning the new year, but what is your deadline or finish line? Would you ever join a race if you had no idea how far you had to run? Of course not. Thus, not having a finish line for achieving your goals can cause your motivation to wane, or discipline to slip by taking breaks from working on your goals consistently.
Remember, the finish line is not just an ending you are moving towards passing. It is a guide on how to manage and use your time and effort. Most traders fail to manage their time effectively, both in front of the screen (trading, analyzing the market for setups), and away from their screen (reviewing trade journal, analyzing performance/stats).
It is common to think ‘next week, or next month I will use proper risk management, or write in my trade journal‘. How many times have you said this to yourself, and how many times have you not hit your goals on time?
The difference between successful people and those who are not, is successful people know how to manage their time well, set small goals that lead to the larger goal, and constantly make progress towards them. By knocking down the smaller goals, it makes the larger goal seem much more possible.
Each step you take should have a finish line for achieving your goals, so you know how to effectively manage your time and build towards your new heights.
In Summary
Creating resolutions and goals at first seem simple and straightforward, especially if they are just done in your head. But you’ve committed to becoming a successful trader.
You’ve spent money, time, and made many sacrifices to complete the journey. Why waste that time and effort to fall short and not get the financial freedom you want? Why spend so many hours and dollars to not get a return on your investment which is the the best kind of all – independence for both money and time?
Thus, make sure you know what you need to achieve your goals, that they are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.
I always suggest starting off asking, ‘What Do I Need To Trade Successfully‘. This is a critical step towards achieving any goal. But once you’ve asked these questions, then you know what you need to do and where to go. Now you just need a map and to set your goals for getting there.
Maybe you want to achieve your goals in a few months, a year, or maybe a few years. Regardless, you need a map, and clear goals/steps to get there, so make sure to make your plans and goals workable by following the five steps above. Doing so is the fastest way to reaching your goals and crossing the finish line.
Thus in 2013 accept the challenge to become a successful trader by working with a trading mentor, study a rule based system, do the work, and enjoy the rewards as they are more than worth it.
I’d like to end with a quote that was inspiring for me in my early years of trading from Hannah Moore:
“Obstacles are those frightful things when you take your eyes off your goals”
Kind Regards,
Chris Capre
Make sure to out my latest trading articles:
My Top Trading Mistakes for 2012
Developing a Successful Forex Trading Mindset Pt. 1
The Ideal Trader