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You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
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I can't stress enough how important goal setting is to being successful in your tradingGOAL SETTING EXERCISE I cant stress enough how important goal setting is to being successful in your trading. If you dont have daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals for your trading, it will be very difficult for you to visualize your success. This is because you will not have something specific to aim for. To be at our best, we always need a clear, measurable goal to strive for. Remember, man (and woman) are at their best when they have a clear goal securely in mind. This exercise will teach you how to visualize you reaching your set goal of making a certain amount of money each day. That does not mean you will reach that goal each and every day. But without having that clear set goal, you will probably not reach it most days. EXERCISE Get in a relaxed state with the relaxation technique Calm Body, Calm Mind. 1) Go into the theater in your mind. Remember to make the theater as comfortable as possible. Have it be a nice soft, comfy chair that you are sitting in. Remember, details are very important. Pay attention to them. Is the screen big or small? How do the arm rests on the chair feel? Details, details, details. At this point, you are trying to strengthen your imagination and see the pictures in your minds eye extremely clearly. If you cant see the pictures clearly yet, dont worry, it gets easier with time and practice. 2) With this exercise, we are going to visualize ourselves at the end of the trading day having reached our goal. Remember, it is very important that your goal be realistic and measurable. Having a measurable goal is easy, because an amount of money is always a measurable thing. But also remember your goal must be realistic. So, if we are a day trader and we visualize ourselves making $250 a day, that seems realistic. If we are a day trader and we try to visualize making $3,500 a day, that is probably not realistic. (Because making that kind of money is probably beyond most peoples capabilities on a daily basis.) 3) The first thing we want to visualize (or picture in our minds) are days that weve been successful with our trading. We want to remember those days where weve been able to make our goal (for this exercise we will use the daily goal of $250). If you need to go back and look at your trading statements to find days that you made money, then do that. The idea here is you want to see those days in your mind and feel the feelings you got from being successful on those days. Play those days back to yourself in your mind. Remember to notice the details in those days. How does the phone feel in your hand when you were placing the orders? Can you see yourself moving the mouse on the computer to check the charts? Can you see yourself writing your orders down on a piece of paper? How does the pen feel in your hand? Details, details, details. 4) For those people that have not had winning days trading, or if you cant remember them, thats O.K. Like we said earlier, you can simply make up an experience in your minds eye when you were successful. See yourself getting out of your winning trades successfully. See yourself getting out of a losing trade as soon as you realize the profit potential is no longer there. Remember, your mind cant tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real one if there is enough detail. The imagined experience doesnt even need to be in trading. Just remember clearly a time when you were successful in anything and feel those winning feelings. That is the first step. 5) Now we want to move to the next scene in our theater of the mind. We want to see ourselves reaching our goal of $250 each day. One of the keys of successful visualization is to see the end results and let the success mechanism do the work for you. So, see yourself having made $250 (or whatever amount you choose) on the first day of the week (Monday). See yourself in theater of your mind after the trading day is over. Do whatever you do when the day is over. See yourself mark down that you made $250 on Monday and turn your computer off, turn off the light in the office, push in your chair, or whatever you do when the day is over. 6) Now, do the same thing on Tuesday. Remember the details you see. I know its been said a hundred times, but if you dont pay attention to the details, it will not work. To see the details, this exercise will take longer than two minutes. If its only taking two minutes to do this exercise, youre not doing it right. You must see the pen hitting the paper as you write down that you made $250. How does the pen feel in your hand? You must feel your hand turning off the computer and hear the sound it makes when you flip the switch. See the room go dark as you turn off the light and leave for the day. 7) After youve seen, in your minds eye, reaching your goal each day for a week (Monday to Friday), then go back and see your successful trades again, or at least successful experiences from the past. This will build confidence and help you to get used to the visualization process. 8) This goal setting exercise is extremely important. First, without having clear-cut goals, it is impossible to succeed in trading. There isnt a successful trader alive who doesnt set clear goals for himself. Second, having these goals will help you program your success mechanism for the other visualization exercises. 9) Remember to do these exercises for at least 30 minutes a day. It is also helpful to try and do them at the same time each day. And finally, you must be relaxed for these exercises to be effective. VISUALIZING LARGE WINDFALLS Most people, when asked if they are comfortable making a large amount of money, will quickly tell you, absolutely, no question about it. But you know what, very few people are really comfortable with it in their subconscious. This is because most peoples idea of how long it takes to make a certain amount of money is very ingrained in their minds. Believe it or not, most people will unconsciously give back their large winnings because they really arent comfortable with making money as quickly as is possible in trading. The ideas behind time, effort, and profits are extremely different than what is usually thought of in a normal job. Most people are used to getting a salary or an hourly wage, and it doesnt change a whole lot. But a trader obviously has a very different situation. The amount of effort put forth and the amount of time it takes to make a certain amount of money is unlike almost any other business in the world. Since most people are not used to this situation, if a large windfall does occur for a trader, the traders self-image must agree with that situation. In other words, the person has to have a self-image that is deserving of large windfalls. And most traders (especially new traders) do not have a self-image that says making thousands of dollars in a matter of minutes (or even seconds) is O.K. Making money that quickly is something most people (outside of trading) dont ever experience. So when it happens, and the person is not mentally prepared for it, more often than not, he will give the money back by making trading mistakes, or trading wildly without concern for risk. In my opinion, this happens because inside the person feels guilty for making money so quickly without much effort. With this being the case, we need a visualization exercise to get used to these large windfalls. In other words, we need to change our self-image to the kind of person who feels deserving of making profits (large or small) in the markets and then protect those profits. It is important to note that most people do not really believe they feel this way. They think they do deserve to make a large amount of money and there is nothing wrong with it. But in reality, the programming (things theyve learned as they grow up) theyve received throughout their lives is so ingrained inside themselves they dont consciously think they have this problem. The only thing I can tell you is the results of your trading are the real key. If you are able to hold onto your large windfalls without giving most, if not all, of it back to the markets, then you are in good shape. In this case, your self-image does agree with the ideas of large windfalls. But, on the other hand, when you have a big winning trade and very quickly afterwards youre giving that money back to the market by making poor decisions, then its clear. Your selfimage does not agree with your making big money. If it did, you would be better able to hold onto your profits. Again, most people dont admit this simply because they feel it so deeply they dont consciously think about it. But you should rest assured that with some visualization techniques, this can be easily changed. You will learn to change your self-image to accept and protect large windfalls. EXERCISE 1) Get in a relaxed state with the relaxation technique Calm Body, Calm Mind. 2) Go into the theater in your mind. Remember, like before, make the theater as comfortable as possible. Have it be a nice soft, comfy chair that you are sitting in. Remember, details are very important. Pay attention to them. Is the screen big or small? Details, details, details. Again, you are trying to strengthen your imagination and see the pictures in your minds eye extremely clearly. If you cant see the pictures clearly yet, dont worry, it gets easier with time and practice. 3) Like the last exercise, we are going to mostly look at the end results. With visualization techniques, they are most effective when vividly seeing yourself having achieved your goals. When you do that enough, your powerful subconscious will come up with the means to achieving your goals. But you must see the goal very clearly first. 4) That is exactly what we want to do. Our goal is to keep the large windfalls and not give them back to the market. So, go into the theater of your mind and see yourself clearly closing out a trade that is a nice size winner (for instance, maybe youve just made $1,500 on that trade). Now, after that happens, most people feel pretty good about themselves. And there should be nothing wrong with that. But it can many times give you too much confidence. You may feel like youre smarter than the market or you may think its easy to make money trading. 5) So the next clear image you need to see is you instead of feeling overly confident, is to take a defensive posture. Obviously, when youve made that money, you need to hold onto it. So, see in your minds eye the next trade youre going to do. See yourself taking less risk than you usually would, and also be willing to close out the trade if it doesnt give you profits very quickly. (This is really the opposite of what most traders do. After a big windfall, they take more risk than usual and are not as ready to get out of a bad opportunity because they have that big windfall to fall back on if things dont work out.) In this exercise, we want to be learning a new habit. We want to learn the habit of protecting our winning trades and get rid of the habit of giving them back to other traders. Remember, you can make these little movies any way you want them to be. By mentally visualizing yourself the way you want to be in the future, you are getting your mind used to the new habit. 6) In the theater of your the mind, see yourself doing the opposite of what most people do. After that windfall, see yourself take a defensive position on your next trades. See the details of the next trade. See yourself picking up the phone to place the order. How does the phone feel in your hand? See yourself watching the charts, and if the trade doesnt feel right, see yourself hitting the speed dial button to your broker and get out of the trade to protect the profits that youve just made. See the details! Remember, you can make the movies in your minds eye any way you want them to be. Make sure that in your movies, you do the right thing to protect yourself and act in your own best interest. After seeing these movies in the theater of your mind enough times (at least once a day for a month), your programming in your subconscious will change as youve learned a new habit, and just like tying your shoes, it will become automatic. But you need to practice. Without mental practice, you cant change. Trying to use willpower to change your habits will not work. You need to see the pictures in your minds eye. Its the only way to change your habits. |
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