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CHAPTER 4 CONSISTENCY: A STATE OF MIND As I have already stressed several times, what separates the best traders from

e veryone else is not what they do or when they do it, but rather how they think about what they d o and how they're thinking when they doit. If your goal is to trade like a professional and be a c onsistent winner, then you must start from the premise that the solutions are in your mind and not in the m arket. Consistency is a state of mind diat has at its core certain fundamental thinking strategies that are unique to trading You can try to create consistency without having the appropriate beliefs and attitudes, but your results won't be any different than if you tiy to be happy when you're not having fun. When you're not having fun, it can b e very difficult to change your perspective to one where you, all of a sudden, start enjoying yourse lf. Of course, the circumstances of your situation could suddenly shift in a way that causes you to experience joy. But then your state of mind would be the result of an external shift in conditions, not a result of an internal shift in your attitude. If you depend on outside conditions and circumstances to make you happy (so that you always are enjoying yourself), then it is extremely unlikely that you w ill experience happiness on a consistent basis.

Creating consistent success as a trader works the same way. You can't rely on the market to make you consistently successful, any more than you can re ly on the outside world to make you consistently happy. People who are truly happy don't have to d o anything in order to be happy. Your veiy best trades were easy and effortless. You didn't have to try to make them easy; they were easy. There was no struggle. You saw exactly what you needed to see, and you acted on what you saw. You were in the moment, a part of the opportunity flo w. When you're in the flow, you don't have to try, because everything you know about the market is available to you. Nothing is being blocked or hidden from your awareness, and your actions seem ef fortless because there's no struggle or resistance. On the other hand, having to try indicates th at there is some degree of resistance or struggle. Otherwise, you would just be doing it and not have to tr y to be doing it. It also indicates that you're trying to get what you want from the market. The best traders stay in the flow because they don't try to get anything from th e market; they simply make themselves available so they can take advantage of whatever the market is o

ffering at any given moment. There's a huge difference between the two perspectives. Our minds are designed to automatically block threatening information or find a way to obscure that information, in order to shield us from the emotional discomfort we naturally fe el when we don't get what we want. You won't realize it in the moment, but you will pick and choose i nformation that is consistent with what you expect, so that you can maintain a pain-free state of m ind. However, in the process of trying to maintain a pain-free state of mind, you als o take yourself out of the opportunity flow and enter the realm of the "could have," the "should have," the "would have," and the "if only." Everything that you could have, should have, or would have recogn ized in the moment appeared invisible, then all becomes painfully evident after the fact, after the opportunity is long gone. To be consistent, you have to learn to think about trading in such a way that yo u're no longer susceptible to conscious or subconscious mental processes that cause you to obsc ure, block, or pick and choose information on the basis of what will make you happy, give you what you w ant, or avoid pain. The threat of pain generates fear, and fear is the source of 95 percent of the e rrors you are likely to make.

Accepting the risk means accepting the consequences of your trades without emoti onal discomfort or fear. This means that you must learn how to think about trading and your relatio nship with the markets in such a way that the possibility of being wrong, losing, missing out, or leavi ng money on the table doesn't cause your mental defense mechanisms to kick in and take you out of the opportunity flow With this perspective, you will not be trying to get anything from the market or to avoid anything. Rather, you will let the market unfold and you will make yoursel f available to take advantage of whatever situations you define as opportunities. When you make your self available to take advantage of an opportunity, you don't impose any limitations or expectatio ns on the markets behaviour. You are satisfied to let the market do whatever it's going to do.

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