Daily Mental Conditioning For Becoming a Successful Trader

Daily Mental Conditioning For Becoming a Successful Trader

Deciding to be a profitable financial trader is the first step in becoming one. Trite you say? Not really. Missing this one step or doing it out of order xplains why 90% of brokerage accounts go to zero within the first year, many doing so in the first 4 months!

In addition to arbitrarily deciding to be a profitable financial trader, a more powerful and lasting way is to use psychological conditioning on yourself so that you CONSISTENTLY decide that you are a profitable trader Here’s my interpretation of the method for doing this that I learned from the famous success guru I alluded to in my comments two blogs back.

First, write out the sentence below on a piece of paper.

“FROM THIS MOMENT FORWARD, I AM A PROFITABLE TRADER”.

Second, consider the pain you have experienced before because you have not consistently thought of yourself as a profitable trader. Imagine experiencing that again in the present and future. Do this for 30 seconds. Notice how you feel as you do that.

Third, consider the pleasure you would experience in the present and the future if you did make this decision. Do this for 30 seconds or longer. Imagine yourself getting a string of winning trades in your brokerage account (stocks, options, emini market average futures, pork belly futures, orange juice futures… whatever). Notice how you feel as you do that.

Fourth, imagine beginning to think of yourself. Whatever comes up, change it to thinking of yourself as a profitable trader. If you have ever “changed your mind” about anything, you already know how to do that. For example, if when you think of yourself your first thought is that you are a ballerina, change that immediately to thinking of yourself as a profitable trader. This should take only 5 seconds or less.

Fifth, repeat the Fourth step 10 times in a row quickly, 3 times a day, every day for the next 5 days. After that, you can cut back and gradually reduce the frequency. Remember to mark your calendar to repeat this conditioning a few months later to keep it strong.

That’s how you get yourself to CONSISTENTLY DECIDE that you are a Profitable Trader. That’s the first psychological step to becoming one. DECIDE. Then Condition yourself so that you habitually and consistently make the same decision every time you think about who you are.

The total time the above 5 steps takes will be less than 5 minutes after you have practiced it a few times. Do the math.

Step 1 is 30 seconds.
Step 2 is 30 seconds.
Step 3 is 30 seconds.
Step 4 is 50 seconds, about a minute, 3 times a day, subtotal 3 minutes when carried to Step 5.

Grand total time is 4.5 minutes or less than 5 minutes in one day.

Brokerage statistics show that 90% of accounts opened are depleted through trading losses within a year, many within the first 4 months. People owning those accounts spent all their time doing fundamental analysis, technical analysis, getting news about the latest hot stock, or similar activity.

Instead, they should have spent most of their time doing psychological work on themselves.

Since psychology is 80% of what you need for success, then surely 80% of your time should be spent on psychological matters including the above 5 steps.

More tomorrow….until then, start doing the above steps…now would be a good time for that…