The Source Of Your Anxiety
"When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn't wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?"
— Epictetus, Discourses
Today's meditation brings us back to worrying about and wanting things that are outside of our control. We discussed this in detail on day 9 last month.
To clarify and remind ourselves once again; We can't control the outcome of a horse race or a football match, but what we can do is form an opinion based on the stats/data that we have available to us. How this then pans out in play, is something that we can't control of course! If the potential trade fully meets the rules/criteria for our strategy, we know we will be right many more times than wrong. This means that as long as we stick to our in play trading rules and exit for a small controlled red if things aren't going according to plan, we will be profitable long term. We must however trade what we are seeing and act swiftly without hesitation to close the trade if it's going against us!
By doing this every time rinse and repeat and practising over and over, it should become easier in time! It's very easy when things go to plan and we take our profit, pat ourselves on the back and move on to our next opportunity. It's when things are going against us that we have to be decisive and bail in a heartbeat to protect our bank! When we do this, even if the trade would have actually come back in our favour if we had let it run and we'd have made a profit after we'd taken our controlled red, we still pat ourselves on the back. We remind ourselves of what would have been the scenario had we lost the trade and not cut our losses! A great big hole in our bank which would take us a long time to recover from!
So if we are out before we are in the land of hope; hoping that the trade will work back in our favour, we have no feeling that our insides are twisted into knots and we are in control and we have reacted before any anxiety can take control of us.
What we are basically doing is killing "the source of our anxiety," BEFORE it has a chance to hit us and affect our decision making.