The Three Areas Of Training
"There are three areas in which the person who would be wise and good must be trained. The first has to do with desires and aversions — that a person may never miss the mark in desires nor fall into what repels them. The second has to do with impulses to act and not to act — and more broadly, with duty — that a person may act deliberately for good reasons and not carelessly. The third has to do with freedom from deception and composure and the whole area of judgment, the assent our mind gives to its perceptions. Of these areas, the chief and most urgent is the first which has to do with the passions, for strong emotions arise only when we fail in our desires and aversions."
— Epictetus, Discourses
Today's meditation concentrates on three things that can be very valuable to us as traders, if we can follow these things through.
Firstly; what we should desire and what we should be averse to. We can train ourselves to stick to our rules/criteria for our strategies, waiting patiently for opportunities to appear. These we desire of course. We should be averse to getting involved in a trade that isn't 100% meeting our criteria for whatever reason. Don't do it! We have our rules to stick to!
Secondly; it's concentrating on our impulses to act. We can make sure we don't act on impulse by ignoring the noise on social media platforms and concentrating solely on our strategies and what we are trying to achieve. We should only be entering trades for the right reason; when it fully meets our criteria so that we can pounce! It's not about jumping on other people's trades or suggested trades. If we only trade as per our trading rules, we are taking full ownership of our destiny and not looking for an easy way out and to blame others if it goes wrong! How many times have you jumped on a trade that somebody else has suggested and it didn't go to plan? Stick to your own plan, that you know works when you stick to your rules rigidly.
Thirdly; our judgement. This means entering and executing our trades as planned for the right reasons and being prepared to deal with any outcome from our trades. So we either take our targeted profit, cut it short for a smaller green, scratch (zero loss/win) or take a small controlled red. That last one is vital when things aren't going our way in a trade, to protect our bank!
These "Three Areas Of Training" are interlinked. If our desire is to stick to our strategies 100% of the time, we won't act on impulse, we will act on our criteria being fully met. This means we make the correct judgement call and then it is up to us to execute our trades exactly as planned for all scenarios, regardless of how it transpires.
This won't happen overnight and it takes time to learn from our mistakes. This is why we need to turn up every day that we can and practice, practice, practice, rinse and repeat; because the better we know our strategies, the more comfortable we will be, in executing our trades.
This is the way to success for us as traders.