From my own trading experience I know that the path to trading mastery is peppered with many, often unexpected hurdles. How we as traders overcome these hurdles dictates the nature and speed of our trading success.
A huge issue for many traders is to define what exactly it is they are seeking on their trading path. Sure, most traders know that they want to make a living from trading. They are totally unaware though that they need to change certain aspects of themselves in order to have even a fighting chance at lasting trading success, and achieve the huge satisfaction and enjoyment that comes from trading with mastery.
The average trader focuses on outward results rather than on their being.
This is true for new traders and for expereinced traders too. The psychology of trading is often the last think traders focus on when it should the first and take priority over anything else. While you will have some success in operating in this way focusing primariliy on external trading goals is hard work, stressful and uses up unnecessary energy. Trading from the outside in, so to speak, lacks the natural fluidity and nonchalance that true master traders possess. The enjoyment and happiness you should feel in your trading derives from a peaceful trading mind set of nonchalance and Zen like fluidity. The states are totally inward directed and produce the ultimate trading mastery and enjoyment of the trading game. This is so because they are focused on your inner being and feelings which you can control, while you cannot control your trading results from outside of you.
Good trading psychology is about developing a trading mind set of equanimity that is totally detached from trading results and instead focuses on being in that state of mastery.
In other words: Mediocrity is about having, while excellence is about BEING. In the constant pursuit of achieving better trading results traders forget that in order to achieve consistency they have to change they way they are.
Most of us have the subconscious belief that we can achieve mastery by essentially staying as we are.
This is why traders focus on outwardly, on their trading results results and their trading system, rather than focusing primarily on their being.
If you are like most eager traders you will have soaked up a massive amount of knowledge on systems and strategies, most of it pretty meaningless when it comes to improving your game. On the way you have inadvertently picked up more limiting beliefs and habits than expansive ones. Instead of expanding and empowering your trading psychology you are putting it into a straight jacket of strict trading rules and regulations.
Your strict rules and well defined trading knowledge aquired from too many books on trading strategies are absolute and designed to limit, rather than expand your trading skills. They stifle trading creativity and keep you imprisoned in your present state of safety. This comfortable familiarity with yourself chokes your intuition, your natural sense of adventure and your emotions, the qualities you need to free up your trading and move to the next level of trading mastery.
Leave the person you know behind and step into trading mastery
If you want to achieve true trading mastery you will have to be willing to know yourself as a very different person, a person which is as yet unknown to you. That is the hurdle you have to overcome each time you are improving your trading game.
True trading mastery is never about confinement to strict rules, rather it is about growing into the best version of yourself every day with every trade you make.
Mastery is about trusting in yourself and in your self knowledge while being in a state of observation. Observation is a state of constant awareness and this frees you up to see more than the book of trading rules will ever let you see. Developing trading mastery is about developing sound trading psychology. The psychology of trading is always about the knowledge of yourself.
Below I have listed a number of key differences between the mediocre trader and the master trader. Please take a look at these distinctions and ask yourself where you fit in. Please be honest with yourself. This little exercise will hone your awareness of yourself and of the nature of true trading mastery.
- Mediocrity focuses on having, while mastery focuses on bein
- Mediocrity avoids risk, Mastery manages risk
- Mediocrity strictly abides by the rules while mastery interprets them
- Mediocrity is comfortable, mastery is comfortable with being uncomfortable
- Mediocrity protects itself while mastery trusts
- Mediocrity follows blindly while mastery creates from observation
- Mediocrity trades from knowledge while mastery constantly learns from trading
