Guide to regaining your trading optimism

This is ’take 2′ on this previous post which I discovered was only showing half the content. Sorry about that!

Here’s a blog post with some trading advice for one of the struggling trader’s toughest obstacles - staying positive.

Perhaps you’ve had a string of losing days or even months! Or perhaps you’ve started to become profitable, only to blow it all on one day where your discipline slipped. Its so easy to give in to the tempation to dig yourself into a hole of despair and gloom.

“I’m so *&^*& stupid”, “Why can’t I just follow my system”, “I’m obviously not meant to be a trader”, “I’m doomed”. These are some of the things I remember saying to myself pretty regularly when I was struggling. But guess what, talking to yourself like that will only make things worse. Think like that regularly enough and you’ll start to believe it. Once it becomes a belief in your subconscious its going to start to affect your future thoughts and actions and will sabotage your trading.

So as a struggling trader going through the learning process where you are naturally going to be faced with up days and down days you need help - ways to stay mentally resilient.

Learned Optimism

Dr Martin Seligman has written a great book called Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life in which he teaches simple cognitive techniques, or thinking habits to overcome negative thoughts and either maintain or regain optimism. This book should be in every traders library.

Clearing Negative Self Beliefs

If you are going to become a successful and profitable trader - in addition to reading this blog :o), and developing the skills and mindset of trading, you are going to need to believe that you will succeed. Many of us wreck our own chances of success because of old, outdated beliefs that are still stuck in our subconscious.

You’ve probably heard about Think and Grow Rich, the Law of Attraction, and about the power of affirmations. These are various ways to use the power of your own thoughts and beliefs to create the success you want in your life. However, what most of the teachers of these universal ideas don’t teach you, is that unless you clear your old beliefs, your new one’s don’t stand a chance.

So if you’ve been struggling for some time and you’ve stocked up your subsonscious with beliefs of doom, gloom, failure and loss you are going to need to clean them out before you can turn the page.

Here are three techniques that work based on my own personal experience. I recommend all of them very highly. They will help you in your trading and in the rest of your life as well.