No Blame, Just Focus
"You must stop blaming God, and not blame any person. You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret."
— Epictetus, Discourses
A very interesting meditation today and you can only imagine the pain and suffering that Nelson Mandela was put through for all those years and it is amazing how he became a "figure of dignity" within the prison!
When we look at trading, we can claim our self assurance by continuing to make the right choices, as per the rules/criteria for our strategies.
Try to emotionally detach yourself from your trades. You take the actions that you take, because you are responding to what you are seeing happen. If you can do that early enough to prevent unmanageable losses, you are protecting your trading bank and making sure you are in the game for the next battle.
Don't let your emotions distract you if a trade is going wrong. Instead, act swiftly and decisively to cut a losing trade short, so that you stay in control.
If a trade goes wrong and you don't manage to control the loss early enough, dust yourself down and quickly move on. If you let it eat away at you, it can then become a problem during future trades and you will become fearful of making mistakes.
Mistakes will come occasionally and all we can do is try to do the best that we possibly can and analyse any trades that went wrong and aim to make sure that we don't repeat the same mistake.
The last line of todays' meditation, sums it up perfectly and I quote; "Don't get emotional--get focused"
If we can stay focused and "in the zone" every time that we enter a trade, with zero distractions, we are giving ourselves a fighting chance to survive.
If a trade goes horribly wrong and you feel angry or upset, stop trading and take a walk to clear your head and calm down. The last thing that you want to do is revenge trade and force trades that don't meet your criteria, just to get back what you have lost as soon a possible!
You have to realise that you can't change what has just happened. Stick to the plan, keep calm and carry on!