Trading Mindset :Professional trader should have Part -I

This is the message one of my students wrote to me

“I don’t get it. I know there is good money to be made in trading (I see people doing it) and I’ve known success before. It’s not like I don’t know what a winning mindset is. I’ve proven myself before. Yet trading success still eludes me after a number of years, and I don’t know why. I’ve made success happen in other areas of my life, I work hard, I’m goal-oriented, I’m motivated, have a great attitude, have a good analytical mind, I’m a proven leader, and I know how to win. So, what’s wrong? What is it I am missing?”

SUCCESS IN OTHER FIELDS DOES NOT TRANSLATE INTO TRADING PERFORMANCE

If you hang around traders talking shop very long (and being honest), you will hear this story repeated endlessly. Many people who have devoted themselves to becoming a professional trader have experienced success in other fields before they came to trading. They know how to trade when the pressure of risking capital is not part of the equation of trading success.
In fact, one of the first flaws they bring to their new (or not so new) career in trading is that they assume the same psychological skills that aided them in their past career could also be leveraged to produce the same kind of success in trading without modification for the rigors of trading.
This is a misguided, and often an account damaging, flaw. Somehow this aspect of risking capital in real time makes for a completely different calculus of performance. Success in many other fields is rooted in pushing your will upon the world and, by sheer hard work, will power, and ignoring fear, conquering the world “out there.” The skills of setting goals and assertively making those goals happen by taking personal control of fear are honed into powerful tools for shaping the future. And with this kind of thinking, if you don’t succeed, you just push even harder to make things happen. Additionally, you must be in control of the factors that bring forth the envisioned reality.
Success, you are taught in this paradigm, comes by aggressively acting upon the world and making it happen according to your will. This formula for success is at the root of many a successful business and career. And out of that success comes the assumption that the same principles, applied to trading, will continue to produce success.


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