Trading is a tough business, one of the toughest out there.
In most businesses, you can work harder or hire other people to make up for skills that you lack, in order to become successful.
But in trading, you run the whole show and everything depends on your skills and your trading psychology.
On one hand, that is great because you are the boss. You have nobody else to answer to and you are in complete control of your destiny.
This also means that if you have a good trade in the morning, you can take the rest of the day off. You are not exchanging hours for dollars, like in a regular 9-5 job.
However, what if your boss (AKA you) is painfully indecisive and an all-around crap trader? He always seems to go long right before price drops and fails to take those trades that turn out to be big winners.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not your fault.
So don’t lose faith in yourself.
The real culprit is the education system that we have been brought up in. This post will show you how the education system as we know it, has failed us.
Then I’ll show you what you need to do to overcome that programming and become the trader that you want to be.
The Antiquated Education Model
For centuries, schools have been structured in basically the same way. You go to school and you are forced to learn everything that your teachers teach you, regardless if you are interested in those subjects, or not.
When you ask why you need to learn these things, you are told that, if you want to become successful and happy in life, you need to get good grades and get a good job.
It seems logical and everyone else seems to believe it, so we blindly go along with it.
Teachers and parents often talk about people who are successful and attribute that success to things like having good grades, going to the right college or being in the right profession.
So we learn that if we want to have the things we desire in life, we need to follow one of these pre-determined tracks.
…and therein lies one of the biggest reasons why it is so hard to become a successful trader.
For example, let's say that you want to own a big 5-bedroom house and drive a M3 BMW. So you look around and a lot of the people you see with a nice house and that car, are lawyers.
So you set your mind on becoming a lawyer.
However, many times, we forget to ask ourselves two important questions along the way:
- Would I enjoy being a lawyer for the rest of my life?
- Is there another (more enjoyable) way to get that house and that car?
You can probably relate to this, in one form or another. You have probably worked a job for 5 years (or more) before you realized that it sucks.
But you followed the formula, how could you have gone so wrong? Well, because you ignored the means and only focused on the ends.
How This Applies to Trading
When we want to learn to trade, most of us follow the same logic that we have been taught in school. We look for the first successful trader we can find.
Once we find this trader, we set our mind to learning her trading method because we have been taught to emulate success, without regard for how we get to that success.
…and this is one of the biggest reasons why aspiring traders fail to become consistently profitable.
To find the solution to this problem, we have to rewire our thinking…
The You-Centric Education Model
What if you could do it over and your formal education started with YOU? What if your elementary school teachers took into account your interests, learning style and innate abilities…then taught you accordingly?
Your life would probably be totally different right now.
Even if you don't believe that this method would have worked out for the better, humor me for a minute.
Let’s flip the traditional education system on its head and take a look at what could happen if your schooling focusing on you first.
For starters, if you only studied the things that interested you, school would have probably been a lot more fun. You would have wanted to go to school, instead of ditching class to go to the movies.
When we enjoy something, we also tend to become experts at it. When you were a kid, where you an expert at something like dinosaurs…or cars?
I would venture to guess that the answer is probably yes. You were an expert because you genuinely loved that topic.
For example, I was an expert at baseball. I was terrible at playing it, but I loved watching it and knew almost everything about the game.
You are probably an expert at something right now, simply because you enjoy it.
So if you were brought up to enjoy what you are doing, then you would probably be really good at it and figured out a way to get that big house and that nice car with those skills.
Even if you didn't figure out a way to make a lot of money, you would be one hell of a lot happier!
How This Applies to Trading
Alright, now let's look at this education model in the trading world.
What if you first figure out where your trading interests and abilities lie, then pick the trading methods that are best suited to your individual personality and lifestyle? Well, for starters, you will be working with your strengths, instead of against them.
Then trading also becomes more enjoyable and dare I say it…*gasp*…even fun.
So before you sign up for that next trading course or attend another webinar, ask yourself:
- What is my Trading Timeframe Personality?
- How much time do I realistically have to commit to learning and trading every day?
- Am I more of a trend trader, reversal trader or breakout trader?
Of course, this will take a little time to figure out, just like when you were discovering your other interests in life.
But once you can answer these questions confidently, you exponentially increase your chances of being successful at trading.
I've experienced this myself and have heard it time and time again from other traders. They only started to see positive results when they worked with their personalities.
Conclusion
Even though your miseducation is not your fault, you are 100% responsible for what happens next.
…especially now that you now know how to fix it.
Remember to start by figuring out the answers to those three personality questions, then seek out training that is aligned with those traits. This will put you light years ahead of most people who are learning to trade and greatly increase your chances of success.
What do you think? Are you willing to try it?
