Trading fears are not the sole domain of new traders, actually far from it. Much misunderstood, fear can hit at any time. The real issue about trading fears has to do with bumping up against your thresholds, which can happen at any time.
Growth and Development, Evolutionary Universal Laws
You are growing and changing all the time, for the most part not noticing that it is happening. However, when an evolutionary impulse hits, and you are standing in the way, like most people are, it can get very uncomfortable emotionally and physically.
In a culture used to thinking within the linear realms of logic, fixed, mental-reference points, and past experiences, the idea of continuous growth gets little or no attention from traditional trading coaches. Yet, understanding the nature of evolutionary growth goes a long way to explaining much of what traders and people in general are going through in their lives.
The maxim “Nothing is as constant as change” is known by all and understood by few. Alas, it is an essential truth about universal law that pertains to everything in existence, without exception. If understood correctly, it would help many a frustrated trader deal with his or her trading fears in a very different manner.
Evolutionary growth is much more complex and I cover the subject in depth in my books and courses, as it is a core foundation, which you must integrate.
First, Understand This
Fear is a symptom, not a cause. I don’t care whether you are afraid to pull the trigger, or you fear the loss of your capital, or you are afraid to be wrong. These are all stories, an “energy signature,” if you will, signalling the conscious mind you have reached a point in your development where, in order to move forward, you have to leave behind the old reference points.
In order to learn to swim, you have to let go of the idea that the water is dangerous, or, that you could drown. You have to embody the belief that you know what to do to keep afloat when you first enter the water. The fear you might experience is the mind’s worry that it has no experience of what it is like to swim. Old survival mechanisms kick in at that point, and those old survival mechanisms prevent you from going forward.
The conscious mind functions in the realm of the known, while any kind of growth, be that in your trading, in your relationships, or elsewhere in life, confronts you with an unknown future for which there are no definite reference points.
The universe moves forward and expands. Any observation to the contrary is an illusion. Hence, when you go back or stand still, you are going against the natural flow. Your energy gets congested while you are playing small and too safe.
Since you are an integral part of this universe, you also grow and expand all the time. You are not doing this physically for the most part; you are doing it through your consciousness.
And here is the rub – most traders have no idea how to direct their conscious minds in alignment with universal forces. Instead, they keep falling prey to the conditioned, linear mind which is limited and is ill equipped to deal with the alignment process of continuous change.
You can operate within the confines of your known reality for a while, however. Just like the chick in its shell; either it breaks through the shell and becomes a chicken or it perishes in its shell. You have to make the break away from your existing comfort zones of a known reality into the arena of the unknown.
No matter how much you study, or how often you have been successfully going through the transitions of change in the past, you cannot know exactly what the future is going to be like. Your mind will do its utmost to re-create life from the existing reference points. We trade, invest, and live life in general based on the past, and that does not allow for progress toward trading mastery.
Not only does it engender many an unnecessary fear, the habit also goes against the universal law of motion.
Letting Go of Fear is Relatively Easy
Once you intellectually understand how your mind creates all kinds of fear while looking for reference points which simply do not exist, you can calm the static in the restless mind. The process is not, as is commonly assumed, about adding steps, and learning new things to catapult you to the next level. The process is one of unlearning and letting go.
Energy is Finite
You cannot add to or subtract from energy. You can only change it. It is an inside job. Your job is to learn how to let the old reference points go. You must learn to live from within your core, instead of seeking validation from sources outside of you for everything you do and think. Watching CNBC, adding indicators, or using new trading systems is not going to help you quell your fear and anxiety.
Self-Knowledge is Key to Serenity and Mastery
Only when you are willing to go direct, meaning go to the source inside you, and free yourself from all the false perceptions about your trading reality, which you still carry like unwanted luggage from past trips, will you be free to move beyond fear, anxiety, stress, and limitation. Only then will you become that person who trades with Zen-like calm and confidence.
Only when let go of the idea that you cannot swim, that the water might be dangerous, or that you find it hard to learn will you achieve success.
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