Unlocking the #1 Key to Stop Losing & Start Winning in Trading

So what's the number one thing you can do by far above anything else that you can do, really, to make huge improvements in your trading and subsequently in your life as well? There's one thing you can do, and that's what we're going to talk about today. And here's what I'm talking about. This is really, I mean, seriously, you know, you can focus on strategy, you can focus on psychology, you can focus on, you know, goal setting or whatever, but there's one thing that has to happen before anything else, and that's, you know, taking ownership of your situation and just simply recognizing that, you know, whatever is your current status, whatever is going on in your situation, whatever is going on in your trading, your life, whatever right now, simply recognizing that where you are right now is a result of your own doing and your own choices that you've made, the things that you've chosen to do, the things that you've not done, the things that you've chosen to ignore or neglect or procrastinate on or just go na na na na na na, all that kind of stuff. The reason I'm sharing this with you isn't to make you feel bad. This for me, and this happens every year at least once, but especially around this time of year when I'm reflecting on the past year and what didn't work, what things did I put a lot of energy into, both mental energy, emotional energy, resources, time, money, all that kind of stuff. I look at where I put my time, the decisions that I made, where I chose to allocate my resources, and were they really paying off and did I get the result that I was looking for? And if I'm, you know, whatever it is about my situation right now that I would like for, you know, like, for it to be better, well, then let's take a serious look at it. And rather than blame anything, you know, I can blame, you know, the world, I can blame the markets, I can blame anything. But if I'm blaming anything, then that means I'm giving up control to do anything about it. Only when you take ownership of it and you say, yes, I am where I am by my own choices and by my successes, by my failures, but I'm here by my own doing. And then you actually empower yourself to go ahead and say, okay, I would like for it to be better. And so taking ownership of where I am now, let me take a look at what I've been doing, the decisions and the choices that I've made. What can I do differently to Achieve that better. And what is it that I really want? Because here's the thing. Part of it is if you don't get clear on what you want, it gets really tough to get there. If you're spending most of your time running away from something, and that's all you're doing is just running away from something, and you're not running towards something, you'll run away from it for a little while, and then you'll kind of fall back to it. You'll run away from it, you'll fall back to it, and that's a cycle that sucks. I've been there. I still encounter from time to time with different things. So don't feel bad. Like I said, I'm not judging anybody. I'm just trying to raise your awareness to it. If you find yourself in a cycle where, yeah, it gets better, it gets worse, it gets better, it gets worse, then take ownership of it and say, okay, what can I do to break the cycle? And sometimes part of it is just plain getting clear on, really, what do you want? And it can be as simple as. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, I'd like to make ten grand a month with my trading. That's my ultimate goal. That's what I'd like to do right now, or 20, or, you know, 30, or whatever your goal is, or even if it's only two. Cool. But set a tangible goal for now. This isn't, you know, the end all, be all forever. It's just this is your goal for right now. You want to get to this point right now, and then you'll set another goal. But give yourself, Give your subconscious and yourself something tangible to work toward is a great starting point. And then you can identify the gap. Okay, where am I at right now? That's where I want to be. What have I been doing to try to get there? What's been effective, what hasn't? And be honest with yourself. I have to be honest with myself. And sometimes, yeah, I can feel not so great, say, yeah, crap, you know, yeah, I wasted a whole ton of time or I wasted a bunch of money. Yeah. You know, I shouldn't have sat on, you know, those other 20 webinars or podcasts, listening to some, you know, some other guys strategy. You know, how they're making a billion dollars a day starting with 10, you know, yeah, they're interesting. But is the intellectual stimulation moving you toward where you want to go? Or you just really focus on what you're doing and stop watching everybody else, you know, and Their clever strategies and all the success they're having with the fake Lambos and houses and all that kind of stuff. I know, but, yeah, it's easy to get caught up in that. And it's easy to say, well, I'm not happy where I'm at. I want to look at something better. I mean, one. One perspective that I really liked and I remind myself regularly of it is, you know, if you're. If you find yourself, you know, wanting to get involved in other stories, whether it's movies or, you know, other people's lives or YouTube videos or whatever, but if you find yourself that you're, you know, regularly getting pulled into other people's stories, it's because. Maybe it's because your own story isn't as exciting and interesting as you would like it to be. So focus on making your own story more interesting. Would getting your trading the things that you've been struggling with. Yeah, you've tried new systems and they haven't worked. You try new strategies. Same thing. You tried the psychological trick. Yeah. You spent a year on a therapist's couch and dropped 12 grand to find out what your mom said to you when you were five that hurt your feelings and screwed you up for trading. Oh, my God. You resolved that trauma, but you're still not making money trading. Okay, okay. You tried all this stuff and you're still not making money trading. Maybe you need to look somewhere else. Maybe you should look instead of strategy and psychology. You know, just look at yourself and say, have I become the trader that I need to be to actually succeed and be good at this? Have I been focusing on the skills and the knowledge, not just information, not just more strategies, but actually how to be a successful trader? What are the skills that I need? Where do I need to improve so that I up my game so that this game gets easier? That's one of the most frustrating things is looking at trading and saying, yeah, I get it. And it, man, it looks so straightforward, but damn, it's hard to make money at it. That's the thing. There are so many activities that are like that, and one of my favorites is golf. Yes. My dad, my grandfather, they were avid golfers. And I get the game. I know, I understand golf. Am I ever going to be that great at it, you know, as I am now? No. I get the game, but I'm not good at it. I understand how it works. I understand how to swing a club. I understand the objectives in different clubs. I understand a lot about the game, but that doesn't make Me good at it just because I have an understanding about the game. Trading is the same way. Just because you get trading, you understand how it's supposed to work. And it looks pretty straightforward, just like golf. Yeah. You know, I'm supposed to hit it in the middle of the fairway. That's what I'm supposed to do. Supposed to hit it on the green, supposed to put it in the cup. I get what I'm supposed to do. I'm not that good at it because I haven't focused on developing the skills. My dad and my grandfather, they were really good at it because they focused on the skills. They got help. I've never done that. I haven't had the passion for it to invest the time and the money in it. With trading and with business and other pursuits in my life. I have and it shows. I've been successful in these other endeavors where it was important enough to me to invest the time and the money in myself to become who I needed to be. And trading is definitely an occupation that's like that. You can't just be an average Joe, you know, step into the trading world, grab a system and start trading and you're set for life. Making 10, 20, 50 grand a month doesn't work that way. This is an occupation that requires skills and more skills than just being able to look at a chart and place trades. There are a variety of skills that go with this and that's why so many people struggle. They look at it, say, God, you know, it's so easy. I understand what I'm supposed to do, but man, it's hard. Yeah. If you're trying to do a job that you don't have the skills for, it's going to be rough, it's going to be stressful, probably not going to get great results and it's going to be almost impossible for it not to be emotional. But see, here's the cool thing. Here's the really cool thing about it. Just like any other endeavor that involves skills and, you know, understandings, knowledge as you acquire the skills, as you acquire the perspectives, the understandings that you need, the know how as you acquire and develop these skills and these abilities, the game gets easier and your emotional struggles go away simply because the reason they're there is because you're still lacking the skills that you need. I mean, that's proof positive if you're struggling because I guarantee you have what it takes to be to be a successful trader personally from a personal aspect assets standpoint. But all you got to do really Seriously focus on, you know, where do I want to be, what are the skills and you know, what do I need to learn? How do I need to, what do I need to do? What do I need to acquire skill wise, understanding wise to become the trader where. Yeah, trading and making money is easy because it doesn't, it isn't. It doesn't get easy just by acquiring a new strategy. It doesn't get easy just because, you know. Yeah. You figured out some way to be more disciplined. No, just figuring out how to work harder at it or wrestle with your natural, you know, human responses. No. The cool thing about this is when you get skilled up and you actually have the competencies and the proficiency, you find that you have the confidence as well and you can go into your trading and it's no different than any other job that you've ever had where you were good at it. You go in, you do your job. You know, end of the day, some days are better than others, but cool, you know, end of the day you go home, you live your life, come back and do it again tomorrow, and that's it. It's not this huge emotional ride. It's not this big struggle with your emotions and staying disciplined. And it's not the big, you know, injection of morphine or heroin or whatever every time you click that button to place a trade. It's not like that. It's not the big rush. I mean, is it fun to have winners? Sure do. The winners, are they kind of disappointing? Of course. But not ruining your life. It's not that. It's a huge emotional roller coaster. Like I said, when you get the skills that you need to be a good trader, not just a, you know, a person with a good system or a good strategy, but you become a good trader. That's, and, and again, not, not just good at placing trades, but you acquire the skills so that you are a skilled and really competent trader. You have the range of skills and abilities and competencies and understandings. So yes, this gets easy. When you get to that point, man, life is all of a sudden it's normal. As a trader, like I said, it's no different than any other job. I guarantee you've probably had jobs that were more difficult than trading somewhere along in your life. I mean, what I worked with recently, he's a project manager. I've been a project manager. Yeah, that is, that's way more challenging than trading is being a project manager, putting up a building and equipping it, you know, 150 million dollar building with 45 production lines in it. Yeah, that's way more complex than trading is. But I, I did it and that's what was cool about it. So with trading, again, same thing. When you know what you're doing, when you have the skills, when you have the know how, when you really have a solid handle of what you're doing, life is easy. That's why you can look at these, you know, so many of these, you know, wizards, you know, the masters of old and all this kind of stuff. You know, you look at them, it's like, yeah, they make every profession where the, you know, the legends make it look easy. That's why. Because they have developed the skills and the competencies. Not because they had a magic system. Not because, you know, they're just focused on psychology. No, they focused on becoming and, or even if they didn't focus on it, it happened over the, you know, 10 years that it took them to get there. They became a good trader, a fully competent trader, and that's what's really cool. Now, I know I've kind of, you know, gone covered a variety of ground in this video. Really, again, it all comes back to taking ownership of it and saying, yes, I am where I am because I've made the decisions that I've made. I've chosen to be who I am. I've chosen to, you know, you know, try to do all this by myself. I've tried to, you know, not invest in myself. I've tried to just, you know, figure it all out on my own and take the beatings and instead of getting help, getting good help, or I've just continued to start over, jump from system to system to system and just do the start over loop all over again. Whatever it is, the decisions that you've made, just own them and say, okay, these are the decisions that I've made and they didn't work out. I need to make a different decision moving forward and go ahead and make the decision and act on it so that you actually get some different results. Get out of the loop. That's the only way to get out of the loop is start making different decisions. Decide that you're worth investing in. Decide that, yes, you want, you want this to get easier, not just you want to get better at being more disciplined and, you know, controlling your emotions. You want it to become easier so that your emotions aren't a problem. That's the thing. As you develop the competency and the proficiency, it gets easier. Your emotions just naturally calm down because you have such a solid handle. On this, what the markets do doesn't affect you anymore. They can do whatever they want and it doesn't upset you, it doesn't trigger your emotions. That's the real key is, you know, mastery. So if you'd like some help with this, if you'd like, you know, some help talking the situation through, you know, what decisions have you made? What have you been doing? What haven't you been doing? If you want to talk through that kind of stuff, swing by Inside Out Trading.com, book a call with me, we'll hop on, we'll talk about your situation, you know. Yeah. What's been going on, what's been missing, what's, you know, where you've been putting your time and energy that has not been productive, how you can, you know, put a new game plan in place. Again, we'll hop on a call, zoom call, phone call, whatever. We can talk it through and help you get some good clarity on how to move forward and actually have your trading working the way you want it to. Where? Yes. Now, again, you know, you go, you get up, you. You start your trading day. You have fun, it's enjoyable. Some days are better than others, but all in all, yeah, you just. At the end of the day, it's been a good day. You clock out, you've made some money. End of the month, you're making money cool. And like I said, it's no different, really emotionally than any other job. And. But the thing is, the difference will be you have a solid handle on it, you enjoy it, you're making money at it, you're very comfortable. And now it's a very positive asset in your life. So again, if you'd like my help, you know, talking through this, swing by Inside Out Trading, book a call with me. Be more than happy to talk, talk with you about this. Figure out what's going on with you, you know, and your situation, how to get you, you know, where you want to be with your trading. Happy to do that. If it's my help you need, great. If it's somebody else's help that you need, cool. Don't just sit there and keep wrestling with it by yourself, though. That's. That's the hard. That's the long and hard way to go, is trial and error on your own. Hard, most expensive way to do it. I guarantee you that's going to cost you more than anything. So anyway, if you enjoyed this video, if you found it helpful, subscribe to my channel, click on the notifications, Share this with your friends. You know if you have friends who trade and you know they like you already, they'll like even more if you're helping them succeed. Cool. Share this with them. And also, yeah, if you would, if you enjoyed the video, give me a Like down below. And of course again, swing by Inside Out Trading Book the Call. Take ownership of what you're doing. Do things differently. Get the help that you need. I really want to see you make it as a trader. Life is great when it went to work and sucks when it doesn't. I really want to help you make it work. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.