When I was about eight, my older brother, some of his friends, and I climbed atop an old shed that stood near a house, somewhere deep in memory land. Anyway, someone in the group of young boys got it in their head that it would be cool if we jumped from the roof of the shed to the roof of the house, which by the way, seemed pretty far, at least to my eight-year-old eyes. So one by one, each of the older boys took long running starts and made the leap from one roof to the other until I was the last boy standing on the shed roof. “C’mon,” they yelled. “You can do it!” I just stood there, frozen and scared to death about making the leap (literally). They kept yelling and I kept still, panic running through my head. And then something happened in my head that pushed the panic out, replacing the fear with something else, something that was neither fear nor courage, something that spoke to a now-or-never reality. In that moment, I understood that if I did not go for it, I would be the one who did not go, the one who was afraid … So I backed up as far as I could, and in clear words, I spoke in my head, “Close your eyes and go.” And so I ran full out, put as much leap in my legs as I could, and in an instant later, I was picking myself up from my knees on the other roof with the other boys.
I recalled this story today because I recently received an email from Mike who has fear about getting back into trading. He wrote that a bad trading experience had scared him out of the markets, and that experience was so bad that now, when trying to get back into trading, he could not, as he said, “… pull the trigger.” He wrote, “… the fear of loss is much greater than the anticipation of gain.” He wanted to know how he could get past this.
Well, since I am answering this question, the only thing I can tell you is that you cannot give into the fear. If you know how to trade, know how to do the work of trading, and you know how to manage your capital, then the only option you have left to “be with the boys on the other roof” is to close your eyes, and tell yourself, “go.” Simply, you just have to do it.
True, you don’t have to jump the same three-hundred yards through the air, over a chasm a mile deep, and into a headwind approaching one-hundred-miles per hour as I did back then, but you can still do it. Perhaps, you could start trading small, make a few successful trades, and then work yourself back into it. Build your confidence back one trade at a time.
Keep in mind this is not life or death; it is only one trade. Think about this in this context. If I could fly through the air as an eight-year old boy, risking sure death or worse, pain, to get to the other roof, you surely can make one, small trade to get yourself back in the game.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
