Conquering fear
Student Question: How can I overcome fears that sabotage my process of taking proper profits?
Let us separate various probabilities of the possible culprit and various ways of possible solutions.
We can be dealing with simple principle conflicts, meaning deeply ingrained conditioned parts and for those we need a proper exit strategy that allows for various execution conflicts to be solved
next we have to differentiate between relative easy to overcome fears, like trading fears per see, for example taking a loss
and trading triggered fears that can be staggering in magnitude like triggering childhood drama fears
In general fears are stored energy
Imagine a battery of polarity with a strong dis balance between the poles
The goal now is to fuel the green side of the battery until its level supersedes the level of the negative conditionings (fears)
Once the green energy just slightly raises higher than the red level fears in an instance collapse
Here are a few practical applications on how to do this process:
Fear of accepting risk
consider trading much smaller to condition proper responses by habit
meaning its easier to accept risk when risk is smaller sometimes smallest units of the underlying instrument exceed the traders risk appetite
consider trading either Micro contracts or even an instrument different to ones typical market if that market allows for very small increments of risk (like Bitcoin)
another way to Rome is:
This process requires a physical leaving the computer station once the entry has been triggered/executed
you would either need a bot that executes the remaining OCO orders (one cancels other) or place the OCO orders at your brokerage itself in advance
for example:
if you have a purchase order at $20 with a stop at $ 19 and a first Quad exit financing point at $21
all these orders are placed on the brokerage as a string order and the discipline is that once the $20 order is filled you literally walk away and hand over the remaining order execution to the brokerages computer
by automating the exit taking process one can slowly create experiences for the green side of the battery to trust ones system and not interfere with the strains of an uncertain future
another aspect is:
We have an innate urge in trying to control the uncontrollable future
since we do have no ability as human beings to think in sample sizes, it is typical that the otherwise random in its outcome single trade event becomes unproportionally important to the observer
so anything else that might come to mind why fears might take over should be considered and prior to the trade remedied
at times trading a different trading object for the conditioning process is useful as one example
changing ones self image also helps to overcome limiting beliefs (fears)
great work has been done in this field by Maxwell Maltz
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