Trading on Target: How to Cultivate a Winner's State of Mind

THE COST OF TURNING NEGATIVE STORIES INTO POSITIVE ONES

Negative stories all share the same power to influence a trader’s performance whether they are old stories told ad nauseam, hidden stories, or suppressed stories. They all possess the power to excuse a trader from following his rules.

A trader can use the negative narratives to prove that he is a victim and is not responsible for his failures. Armed with his stories, he can prove that it is hopeless to try and that failure is inevitable regardless of your efforts and that life is unpredictable, cruel, and arbitrary. The narratives can be used to prove that people, including himself, cannot be trusted to do the right thing or to fulfill a promise. In short, it is difficult, even next to impossible, to maintain the hard disciplines of a trading master in the face of stories that prove that success is beyond reach. So, if the price of holding on to your stories is this version of ‘success,’ what is the price of letting go?

• Fear of being wrong. Intelligent people like to be right. In fact, our egos are so attached to being right that they would rather be right than successful, healthy, happy, and famous. The highest cost of letting go of your stories is being wrong and, unfortunately, for some traders, the cost is too high.
• Fear of being vulnerable. For traders who have been holding on to secret or suppressed stories, letting go of their stories involves the potential for being vulnerable. After all, fear is what prevented them ...