TradingTrading Psychology
How to put new trading ideas into practice
1. Change comes more easily if it is carried out daily over a long period. And it’s best if the new activity (such as analyzing or watching for a new type of exit) becomes part of your daily routine.
If you find something worth introducing or changing, the best way is to try it every day for a while to form a new habit.
2. If you have a few things that interest you that you want to change – then don’t do everything at once. You can achieve the best results if you spend more time on one of these things first, and then on the next.
This is the easiest way. In addition, you have better motivation, because you start to see the results of your action, and this builds motivation. There is a very good book on the market on this subject, “The One Thing”.
3. A way to reinforce for people who forget to do something is to stick a note in a visible place, such as on a mirror or on a monitor.
Ambitious trading goals are counterproductive
If you want to change something in your trading and you have a specific goal, make this goal not too ambitious. On the contrary, make it easy to achieve.
Why is that? There are several reasons.
Well, it would be good for you to have motivation to act. If you have an overly ambitious goal then you also have a high chance of failure when trying to achieve it. This demotivates you, lowers your mood and discourages change.
Conversely, an easy goal that you achieve can give you an extra motivational kick and lots of positive energy.
Plenty of people torture themselves by setting overly ambitious goals. By doing so, they put themselves in a losing position; the position of a parent , who gives a child an unattainable goal just to add punishment to the bitterness of failure moments later.
Negative feedback in trading psychology
This creates a double negative feedback loop. After something like this, will you want to continue to develop, continue to set goals and achieve them? Knowing that for failing to achieve a goal your eternally dissatisfied inner voice will still tell you that you are a loser?
And yet, many things can’t be done, can’t be achieved right away, thus you punish yourself for failing instead of encouraging you to try again, because this is the only way to succeed.
Such a mechanism is a form of negative, aggressive internal dialogue that only frustrates and discourages us.
It is one form of perfectionism – which hinders our development by stigmatizing and punishing us for the efforts we put in.
It is a completely nonsensical attitude, and unfortunately one that is often encountered. Many of us imitate in this way our parents, who with strictness tried to force us to make efforts. Or those who did not give us attention, so we tried at all costs to earn it. Praise was rare and reprimand was a daily occurrence. And if we accept that indifference to us and our efforts is also a form of reprimand, we will better understand what may have been implanted in our psyche.
But let’s think together, does a good parent punish a child for not doing a difficult task?
Of course not! Rather, he tries to encourage them and build in them, through praise of their efforts, confidence and strength to put in the effort and overcome failures. Having failed at the first one, it will succeed at the next.
Punishment after a “failure in the process” only hinders the exploration process and sometimes prevents the goal from being achieved.
I will summarize it with these words:
Turn double negative reinforcement into double positive reinforcement: set goals that are easy to achieve and praise and reward yourself for your efforts.
Exactly as you would do when building your child’s confidence and strength to overcome failures.
That way, when you are faced with a huge goal, you will find it easier to manage. Not only will you be more motivated with double positive reinforcement, but you won’t hinder yourself by punishing yourself for not achieving intermediate goals.
Eliminate overly ambitious goals, know how dangerous they are, break them down into smaller and more manageable goals, achievable in the reality of a day filled with other responsibilities.
Avoid fighting with yourself, dissatisfaction and frustration. Especially those that are triggered by your own psychological mechanisms.
You’ll stop them, you’ll have a better life and you’ll reach your goals faster. You will see how logical it is.
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