The Real Cause of Stress in Trading - not what you'd think

Hi, Brian McAvoy with Inside Out Trading here. Got a question for you. When you go into your trading day, when you're getting ready to place a trade or when you know you've executed a trade, do you find it really stressful where it just really tenses you out, it's taxing and it just creates a very tremendous state of discomfort for you. The reason I'm asking is because a lot of traders, they think that this is kind of a natural part of trading, that, you know, as far as being emotional and being stressful and that kind of stuff, that that's just an inherent part of trading. And I want to let you know that that's not true. It is entirely possible, it is very possible for you to trade in a very calm, relaxed, confident manner. And you know, where you just, you're very, like I said, you're relaxed, you have peace of mind about it, you're comfortable and you know that you're okay. It's not stressful at all. Now a lot of people make the mistake of, you know, going along with common notion that, you know, stress is a feeling that things are out of control. I say that that's a mistaken perception because what I found over the years, whether it's trading or anything else, there's another thing, there's another reason for the stress. And here's what it is. If you're presented with a situation and you have an outcome that you are not real happy with or that you're concerned about, maybe like you're going to lose money, so you've got this concern about a potential consequence or, or possible negative result from the situation. Like I said, it could be trading, it can be a relationship issue, it can be a career related issue. It can be anything, any situation that you're finding stressful. It's where you're concerned about a possible negative outcome to whatever's in front of you. A lot of times it's very stressful because it feels like a long term thing. Like no matter what you do, it's still going to suck. And now the reason that it feels stressful is because it's like of the options that you have available to you, none of them are really acceptable. None of them are satisfactory. So like I said, maybe whether it's relationship or it's a career thing or a house purchase or whatever, or trading, it's because you're sitting there and you're saying, well, the options that I have in front of me, none of them have me feeling good. None of my options feel Good. And I just don't see any other options. Basically, all the options that I have available to me are lousy, and I'm feeling bad because of that. Here's what you need to do. This works every time. This is advice I follow for myself. That's what I share with my kids, anybody I talk to. If you're feeling stressed out, one of the quickest ways to relieve the stress is, is to explore what other possible options you have. Seriously. It can be that simple. Now, the thing is this approach, it causes you to ask the question, okay, what other options do I have? And so you need to open your mind up and be open to even some stuff that seems pretty ludicrous. And that's fine. The main thing is you want to open your mind up and get out of this closed, really crappy, dark, stressful, tense place and get opened up and explore your other options. And you'll find that, okay, you may have a whole lot of options. Now, most of them are kind of ridiculous and hilarious. I mean, for example, with your trading, you're sitting there saying, well, you know, I just. No matter what, seems like no matter what I try, I just, I can't make money out. I just keep losing money. And I'm just, you know, and, you know, I can't stick to my system. And I just keep screwing myself and I just keep handing money to the markets and, man, this just sucks. And I keep buying systems. I keep getting books on trading psychology, and nothing seems to work. Sound familiar? Okay, so start exploring options. Well, maybe I'll just give up on all these other systems here and I'll go with a coin flip system. Whereas, yeah, I'll just flip a coin or I'll roll dice. I'll go to just a purely random system. Screw it, I'll take what I've been doing and. And I'll just do the opposite of it. There are lots of things you can do. Like I said, even going to a coin flip system. There are coin flip systems. There are several of them. And they work and it's cool. First time I heard of it, I was like, you got to be kidding me. I worked with a guy. That's what he had. We worked through. He needed help with documentation on his system. We got it cleaned up, got him Square on was a very profitable system. It was cool. So anyway, my point is, explore options. Sometimes they might seem a little unusual. I mean, heck, even if, you know, you say, well, I'm going to start checking my astrology. Cool. If it opens you up and it's something different from what you've been doing that hasn't been working. Cool. That's a step in the right direction. The main thing is explore options. Keep exploring options. Keep exploring options and you may find out that you over, over a period of a few days, as you think about this, you might have a hundred different options. Like I said, a lot of them are kind of silly. Like I said, as far as astrology or rolling the dice or whatever I would normally do, I'll just do the opposite of it. That kind of stuff might seem kind of silly, but hey, if what you've been doing hasn't been working and you just don't see any way that it's going to work, fine. This is a way to open up your creativity to explore other things and it gets the stress off of you because now you're looking at better options. I mean, where I first ran across this was hilarious with my daughter. She was having an issue with one of her teachers and she's like, you know, I got the situation, but I don't know what to say. And this just sucks. And I'm like, well, you know, yeah, you could say that. Or, you know, you could jump up and down and start screaming, laughing hilariously. And we started going through all the silly stuff that she could do as far as reacting when her teacher did this one thing. And it was funny because, yeah, I mean, within a matter of minutes, all of a sudden we got like about 20 different options. Most of them were goofy as hell, but hey, we wound up in the exploration, we wound up coming up with a couple that actually did work well. Now why do I bring all this up? Yeah, one of the main things that I do is I try to get traders to understand that if you're frustrated because you've been trying different systems, you've been at this for a while, you've been trying different systems and, and you can't get any of them to work. And you're still fighting with the discipline stuff, sticking to a system and all that kind of stuff, and you just keep going back and forth between the two. New system, focus on discipline. New system, focus on discipline. And the things aren't working. Okay, well then you need to understand something. There's something that you're missing. With the trading system mastery course that I do, I wound up creating the course because I was helping traders explore why they were hesitating so much in their trading. And we went through all this normal psychology stuff and it just wasn't. We weren't Pinning down the real cause of the problem, they weren't making progress. So we started exploring other options. And when I started asking them, hey, walk me through your system, that's when we started noticing the discomfort points, the stress points, the hesitation points, and come to find out yet what they were working with, what they were trying to be disciplined to was the problem, and also how they had implemented it, where it came from, all that kind of stuff. So sometimes what is in front of you, like I said, it seems very limited and you just don't see any options that seem satisfactory. Well, start exploring other options. And as far as attending to things from a different approach mentally, because now you're saying, all right, I want to explore some. Of course the catchphrase is out of the box thinking, whatever you want to call it. When you explore more options and you finally come up with an option that now, hey, this seems like it might work, the stress is gone. That's the whole point. Well, secondary point. I mean, first of all, you want things working. Secondly, you want stress to go away. And if you can accomplish that and get rid of the stress and get things working, that's the main point. That's really what you're wanting to accomplish, right? So if you are struggling with some things, if you've been at it at this for a while, you've tried a number of different systems, they're not working for you. And again, you're also having trouble sticking to your system. Maybe you're fighting problems with hesitation or just executing it the way you're supposed to, or being consistent, that kind of stuff, this is where I can help you and I really would love to help you get past the problems and onto good trading. This isn't something that should take years. If you've been at this for more than a year and you're still struggling, and especially if you've been at this for a few years, you're still struggling with the same stuff you were a year or two or three ago. Okay, time for a different approach. So like I said, I'd love to help you fix this. This is something where this is my area of expertise. And I mean, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not taking a psychological approach to it. I'm taking a practical approach to it. So swing on by Insideouttrading.com I got some free training resources for you there. Further insights for you that'll help your trading become easier and better and more productive and more consistent. I hope you have a great day. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.