Can You See Trading Success In Your Future?

Achieving success at anything in life is about planning.

But it’s about more than just writing down a list of things you’ll do and never get to actually doing them.

It’s about envisioning success and the behaviors which are likely to lead long term objectives being met. Most things in life which are truly great achievements for a person come as a result of many years of dedication and persistence.

Sometimes the road is smooth, but usually it’ll be rough in places too.

Without a vision of what success might look like to guide us, that journey becomes much longer and inevitably will have more rough parts to negotiate.

Think Like A Successful Trader

The first step to having a vision of your success is to assess your trading from the point of view of a highly successful trader.  There are many trading books written about and by traders who have reached the pinnacle of success in this very tough business that you can learn from.

• Would a really successful trader hold on to a losing position past their predefined stop?
• Would they not have a predefined stop loss at all?
• Would they really get into a trade which they knew was good and then roll over at the first sign of adverse movement or would they milk it for all it had to give?
• Would they double down on losing positions?
• Would they over leverage their account trading the maximum number of contracts they could at any one time?
• Would they not keep detailed records?

I think you get the idea.

Be honest, be clear and be thorough about all aspects of your trading and in doing so, you may find that you have been far from the road that can lead to long term trading success.

The next step is about defining what you will do to encourage, develop or force yourself to do (or not do) these things.

What is the point in knowing that it’s dumb to average into a losing position if you still do it? Associate good habits with success and they tend to be easier to practice.

I find using a positive association here (rather than associating stuff with being a loser) works much better.

Visualize and Feel Like a Success

The final aspect is to visualize the actual day to day application of these ideas and what it feels like to be successful.

I’m not talking about some warm fuzzy feeling you might get inside (although if that works for you, do it!), I’m talking about growing in stature and confidence within yourself to operate in this professional manner.

• Entering that famed “trading in the zone” is one thing you might visualize
• Maybe ‘seeing’ that you experience more good days. The bad ones are fewer and farther between and they are always controlled in nature.
• The repetition of boring tasks and trades (although I couldn’t claim it’s boring as it makes money!).
• Studying the figures over and over until you are very comfortable with them.

The funny thing, is most of trading is pretty simple really.  Perhaps you’ve heard that trading is simple, just not easy.  Yes, simple trading approaches still work regardless of any “twists” marketers may put on them.

Success is all so close to the grasp of many and yet it seems so far at times and many quit just before they are about to make a breakthrough.

In the famed book, Think and Grow Rich, there is a story summed up to “3 Feet From Gold” where just by having patience and making a slight change in direction, richness awaited.  Instead, the dig for gold stopped and the mine was sold only to have the new owner adjust three feet to reach the richness the mine held.

If you take the time to ‘see it’ like this, you’ll find yourself much closer than you thought you were.  Hopefully that is enough to keep you fighting to obtain your trading goals.