DO YOU REPEAT THE SAME THING IN YOUR TRADES AND EXPECT DIFFERENT RESULTS?

Do you repeat the same thing in your trades and expect different results?

Let us ask you a question: “What’s up with your forex, futures, or stock trades? How’s it going?”

You can answer this question in numerous ways. If you aren’t doing well, your answer may trigger pains as it conjures images of losses that inundate your trading and investing landscape. You might be failing to allow your individual trade strategies to actualize by second-guessing them and ultimately exiting before the due time. It may be failing to stick to your trading rules religiously, therefore, imploding at the slightest challenge in the charts. Or, you may be failing at keeping your commitments to goal-oriented and smart trading, focusing on the most essential aspects of the trade.

These mentioned cases are just a few of several issues that test readers. If any of these apply to you, then most likely, you’ll be in pains while asking yourself how to stop this bad dream.

A sure thing you know about this stream of negative trading events is that you cannot continue on the same part. That is, you have to change. But then, do you know what to change? Which aspect of your trading proceed needs deconstruction or reformulation? People who ask these questions are at the least heading towards the right path.

Unfortunately, several other persons aren’t conscious of the need for change yet: they are caught in the web of the same old mechanical data analysis, planning, and processing, alongside the same internal data negative thoughts, fragmented behaviors, and errant emotions.

If you are caught in this web, it’s not just a bad dream; it’s a nightmare! It means that you are doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results. Despite the fact that this cliche may seem a tad worn, it doesn’t reduce its relevance. We mean, it is still crazy to think that it is possible to get a sandwich from a bubblegum machine, regardless of how many nickels are used.

Change

Change is everywhere; it is ubiquitous. Undoubtedly, with the change, humans become paradoxical creatures of habit, programmed to seat the same foods, travel the same routes, and respond to stimuli the same way. Habits are very easy to form, especially bad ones. With time, if a person with such habits is operating by default, he or she descends into a rut – just like the groove on a scratched vinyl record. A Vinyl record is an ancient holdover from the last century as a means of listening to music.

The habits of an individual who’s operating by default can also be related to the rut made in the muds by vehicles playing a dirt road after heavy rain. When these ruts dry, they’re often hard to navigate because they’ve become concrete-like. This is exactly how it feels when attempting to do something different in a forex, futures, or stock trade. For example, price action is moving towards the stop yet you emphatically tell yourself that you’re not under any circumstances to move that stop. You tell yourself repeatedly while the price action gets closer. Suddenly, to save yourself, you quickly click on the stop and move it, or worse still, take it out. How do you feel?

The truth is, you may feel relieved immediately afterwards, thinking you have dodged that bullet. However, after a few moments, the real feeling sets in – you realize the weight of what you’ve done, and how adversely you’re affected.

Now, do you know how many times you’ve told yourself you wouldn’t do that again? But here you are, still doing it, again! And you have done it several times before.

Violating your commitments, like this one, is what exactly needs to be changed. And for it to have substantive and real effects, it must be changed fundamentally from the inside out.

However, how do you begin the change process? Undoubtedly, change can be daunting.

Repeating the same thing in the same way, over time gets comfortable, breeding some levels of familiarity. Everyone seeks pleasure and comfort as a coping mechanism for pain and discomfort.

Paradoxically, in our quest to avoid pain and discomfort, we actually cause them by succumbing to an archaic ego-driven defense mechanism ostensibly created when we were younger and is now domineering, ensuring we didn’t “get ourselves into trouble.”

How does this happen?

It’s relatively straightforward: for instance, while younger, you broke one of mummy’s most treasured items, mommy yelled at you and felt ashamed. Or, let’s say while in the early years of elementary school, you were asked to answer a question whose answer you didn’t know, making others (your classmates) burst into uncontrollable laughter and a stern look of disapproval from your teacher, making you feel humiliated. At this point, your all-protecting ego would say something like, “you’re bad cause you made mom angry so you must not play; otherwise, you will hurt yourself.” Or, “you are dumb; you need to stay quiet; otherwise, you will hurt yourself again.”

These experiences, and other similar ones, ultimately create a neural network of encoded sense stimulations of these events/experiences. That is, everything you felt, saw, tasted, smelled, etc., alongside your emotions and thoughts, get connected. This neural network of your brain cells is connected to these sensory stimulations electrochemically and electromagnetically and will resurface whenever a similar event/experience happens in your life.

So, as you grow older and you experience similar events, your ego crawls up to you yet again, saying things like, “see, I told you shouldn’t be doing that because you aren’t enough, good enough, deserving, talented enough, etc.” You often engage yourself in these conversations unconsciously, just below your level of awareness, conjuring all kinds of negative emotions such as rejection, disappointment, frustration, anger, etc.

This is the exact way the neural networks are connected to other neural networks, forming strong barriers between you and challenging yourself to grow. These neural networks that continually fire together will “hardwire” together. This means that they will be similar to the cavernous scratch or deep rut in a vinyl record. In the event of such trading action (moving the stop), your default behaviour becomes based on anxiety and avoidance. That is, you start operating with fear.

This type of behaviour strives to stay in your comfort zone, where growth is absent. Technically, it is impossible to grow in a comfort zone; until you get out. To grow, you need to psychologically tear, stretch, and break out of old psychic constrictions and old tissues.

Alternatively, as you grow older, you establish a relationship with everything around you, including places, people, creatures, things, etc. These relationships have an internal depiction, or neural network, represented by the whole chemical reactions in your brain that represent that relationship, including the emotions and feelings.

Changing that relationship causes the network to break and then reform. Imagine how it feels to experience relationship heartbreak. Of course, it is painful and filled with emotional turmoil, and that is a good break-up.

This is how change is registered regardless of the level of feeling, thinking, and doing. Undoubtedly, you must be willing to endure the accompanying discomfort that comes alongside the endeavor to change. No significant change in the way you feel, think, and do happens from the outside. All lasting and real changes in your thinking, doing, and feeling pattern – your internal data – happen from within. Therefore, you must be willing to not only to exit your comfort zone but also to be prepared to remain outside of such a comfort zone while growing. You must choose to stay uncomfortable while achieving your best and highest trading goals and A-game. You need to deconstruct the irrational beliefs and programmed limits while reformulating positive emotions to behave differently under similar circumstances (the trade).

Changes in your behaviour start with changes in what you are thinking and how you are thinking, which translates that you must choose to stay self-aware, drilling into those unconscious conversations to identify what you’re believing or telling yourself when you are in the throes of “moving that stop” or “exiting a trade prematurely.” This can be done through introspection and self-reflection.

Although it is hard, the process is relatively simple. It requires determination, courage, and passionate energy that originates from the deep desire to consistently succeed as a trader and the deep desire to manage your internal data – your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.

One of the ways to help you in this process is to use the tools that we teach in our online trading and investing courses and live trading classes.

If you want to learn more about professional trading and investing across multiple asset classes such as forex, futures, and stocks, please sign up HERE for free at our online trading academy www.onlinetradingcampus.com and get access to a free three-hour introductory course.

Happy trading!

Author Bio: Bernd Skorupinski teaches the undiluted truth about trading and investing at Online Trading Campus and takes you through what it takes to be a consistently successful trader. His favorite moment as a trading mentor is the way peoples’ eyes light up with excitement and confidence when they understand how Supply and Demand trading strategy works and how it can help win in the trading arena. He believes in building core values and discipline that ensures his students do not succumb to the pressures and temptations of the market. He very much believes in following plans and strategy through. If you want to know more about the author Bernd Skorupinski please read HERE