(Dis)Integration
"These things don't go together. You must be a unified human being, either good or bad. You must diligently work either on your own reasoning or on things out of your control — take great care with the inside and not what's outside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!"
— Epictetus, Discourses
Another tough meditation to try and compare to trading when I first read it!
I have actually mentioned a few times over the last couple of months, of the need to take ownership of your own trades and not to just be jumping on other people's trades for fear of missing out (FOMO). These trades may not be a strategy that you use or they may not meet the rules/criteria for your strategy, or even worse it could be last minute and you haven't had the time to check if it even meets your rules/criteria! A rushed trade without doing your research usually means one thing; a losing trade! You may be having a day where hardly anything meets your rules/criteria and feel desperate to trade, so you rely on something that somebody else has suggested! STOP! Ask yourself is this really what I should be doing, if I am sticking to my strategies and my strategies alone? If it's a slow day then so be it; better to be a slow day than a losing day because you didn't stick to your rules!
So basically to stay consistent with your trading and by sticking to what works for you over a period of time, you are combining all your rules and criteria for your strategies and integrating them together 100% of the time.
If you go with trades that haven't been researched, been rushed into or jumped on just because somebody else has suggested them; this is where you are undoing all the hard work that you have put in to developing your strategies, because you haven't stuck to them! You are then blaming everyone else but yourself for the disintegration of your trading!
Stick to the plan regardless of how tempted you may feel to jump on an impulse trade. You will see the benefits in the long run for sure!