The Time in Between
I spend a lot of time talking to you about all the things you can do to plan a trade, execute the plan, record the experience and review your results. I spend a lot of time writing about the fundamentals that matter to me and my view of the global marketplace. I spend even more time, directly with students, discussing belief systems, patterns of behavior and working oneself into a viable trading system.
I imagine that you do something similar with your work day.
In between all of that stuff, however, there are moments. These moments have a lot more control over your decisions and your habits than you realize.
Imagine that you’re the perfectly disciplined trader. You plan every trade. You flawlessly execute every plan. You learn something from every execution. (Written out like that it seems like it should be SO easy, doesn’t it?!)
Now imagine you doing those 3 things on a good day. You’ve woken up feeling refreshed and positive. You’re seeing beauty and possibility in the world. Your mind is at ease and your spirit is peaceful. In between the plan, execution and learning process you’re unwittingly infusing beauty and possibility into your trading. Even if there is a loss for the day, you’re able to look at it objectively and see it for exactly what it is…one moment in your entire trading career…and you’re able to glean something from it that helps you (even if that is just letting it go because it was well planned and executed after all).
Now imagine doing those 3 things on bad day. You’re tired and irritable. Nothing has gone right. You even feel a little insolent that you have to still be SO freaking disciplined in your trading to get it right. Now those spaces in between the doing are filled with negativity and resentment. At this point, even if you have a winning trade you’ll be feeling like it wasn’t good enough.
How about if you’re feeling doggedly determined (usually in spite of something else going on in your life)? Try on “lazy but trying not to be”. Now extrapolate those attitudes and platitudes out over weeks, months even years. What do you think your trading results are going to look like?
Inevitably they will reflect your underlying Self. It will be very difficult to create success in your trading, or in life, if you’re filling the gaps with garbage. On the other hand, if you fill those gaps with the sublime then you’re likely to see the rewards in every part of the process – not just the outcome.
All of those moments in between our decisions hold something for us. Sadly, most of the time, we’re completely unaware of what we’re infusing into those moments. Those quiet thoughts, concerns and hopes are rattling around inside our addled minds. What we don’t realize is that we have more moments in between our deliberate decisions and actions than we have deliberate decisions and actions.
We could be quietly supporting ourselves in those spaces. We could also be quietly sabotaging ourselves. ….and our trading.
Triffany Hammond helps traders of all levels, gain the tools, resources and guidance necessary to build on their strengths and work around their weaknesses so that they can make the best possible decisions for themselves in the Forex Market. Triffany is a regular speaker and contributor at 
I’ve always had a chicken and egg question with this … which came first, positivity or results ? confidence or success ? My view has always been, and please correct me if i am mistaken, that with success comes confidence and positive thinking, which snowballs into further success and so on … If your trading is going well, you’re likely to be positive and therefore a better trader, but if your trading is going badly then that pushes it further down the tube … so the question is who came first ?
My answer is this … the original starting point to success just comes with being in what i call “couldn’t really care mood”, this is when we are detached from emotion about whether we will win or lose the trade but more concerned with the set up, is this a good set up or not. I think this is the reason why lots of us say that we trade better when we are testing at the same time, because testing redirects us towards analysing the trade rather than the consequences of the result of the trade, the damage if we lose or the joy of winning, we are driven purely by the logic of the situation. This ability to detach yourself in a way from being influenced by emotion is what makes a good investor, yes we all get happy when we win and sad when we lose, but what drove us to take the trade … if it was the mindset of the technical analysis then we have a better chance to snowball things …
any thoughts ???
What I’m talking about in this scenario isn’t about manufacturing confidence (or fear) about your trading specifically. It is more a general state of mind. It’s about finding that calm peaceful place in yourself regardless of circumstances (or trading results). What I’m proposing is that when we fill those spaces up with positive feelings and actions that we get, in return, positive experiences in life (and in trading).
It really isn’t a chicken and egg scenario for me at all. The right attitude has to come first, in my opinion.