Making Choices

Making Choices
By Doug Hirschhorn, Ph.D. “The Trading Dr.”
Info@TradingDr.com

Are you good at what you do? That is the first question you need to ask yourself. If you are saying things like, "I used to be" or "not recently," then I want you to clearly realize one thing:

In all my years of performance consulting, I have NEVER seen a person in any field (athletic or business) who had a negative attitude AND ended up being successful.

We Have Choices
Everything we do involves making choices. As human beings, we have the freedom and ability to choose. Some things are easier to choose than others because they involve less effort, energy or resources; but easy choices are rarely the right choices. For example, if you want to get yourself into better physical shape then when your alarm goes off at 5:00am, you have a choice:

* Get up and go to the gym or
* Hit the snooze button and stay in bed for another 45 minutes

Hmm, which is the "easier" choice? And which do think is the right choice? Exactly!

Now, as traders, you sometimes make good trades or trading decisions and end up with a bad P & L. Once again, you have a choice:

* Lose your focus by getting mad at the market, ruminating, beating yourself up or
* Shift your attention to the PROCESS (things you CAN control) and re-establish your belief in your skills/talent/data points

Which is "easier" and which is the right choice?

What We Can Control
Elements outside of our control, are just that - OUTSIDE of our control and therefore, there is little point in wasting emotional capital on them. Trust me, I know how "easy" it is to get caught up in the noise - especially when times get tough - but you have to understand that it serves no positive value to you or you or your trading.

If the referee makes a bad call you can be angry for a few seconds, but GET OVER IT and MOVE ON. Why? Because the ref's call is OUT OF YOUR CONTROL.

Moving forward, I challenge you to start making the harder, right choices and use your emotional capital to focus on the PROCESS and things that are WITHIN your control.

Keep your eye on the ball and your head in the game!
-- The Trading Dr.

Hi Niranjan,
I became a member of this forum very recently. Since then I have been going through various posts. I have noted that you have posted links to some of the excellent books in your earlier posts. What happened? No post in this regard since last so many weeks? Let me assure you that you are doing a great job. Keep it up.
R.S.Iyer

Hi RSI

Thank you. Let me quote Craig Fergusan, my Trading Guru.

" Pay it forward. If you learned something on this forum or someone helped you, then YOU owe it to the forum to help someone out also! Help. And be helped."
" Help the new traders! Remember: YOU were once one also. Please take the time to respond to the posts by people new to trading stocks."

If I find something useful somewhere ,I would like to share it in Traderji because I owe a lot to this forum.

Niranjanam

very noble thoughts,
i think the same way...........
help each other