A Selfish Reason To Be Good
"The person who does wrong, does wrong to themselves. The unjust person is unjust to themselves—making themselves evil."
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.4
We seem to be on a bit of a run of late, where the daily meditations are really tough to compare to trading and today's is no exception!
The only thing that I can think of in comparison, would be the sick feeling of knowing you haven't followed your rules before executing a trade, or hesitated and therefore failed to manage a trade, in the way that you know you should have done!
If you haven't followed the rules/criteria for your strategy, or you've traded on impulse, without doing your due diligence first, or let a potentially losing trade run when you know you should've cut it short, instead of hesitating and you get away with it; you have been very lucky! If you get away with doing this, you are more likely to do it again, until your luck runs out and you get burnt! Then you will have that sickening feeling for sure!
I have said before in my "daily journals;" we are not relying on luck, we are relying on the stats/data that we have available to us, to help us make an informed decision, that fully meets the rules/criteria for our strategy.
Then and only then, do we execute the trade and fully manage it to completion.
You can actually compare the last paragraph from today's meditation, to trading and I quote; "Self-awareness and wrongdoing rarely go together. If you need a selfish reason to not do wrong--put yourself in touch with these feelings. They're a powerful disincentive."
So if you are self-aware, concentrated, patient, disciplined and "in the zone," there should be no reason to break your rules and therefore, end up doing wrong.
Remember, the correct mindset is key for our success as traders.
If you do right instead of doing wrong during trading, then this in itself is "a selfish reason to be good!" and you avoid that sick feeling.