Part 11 - ' Its all in the mind '

Is it all in the mind ...

I dont know , all I know is that the fear comes from the mind.When I 1st started trading futures 5-6 yrs ago I was absolutly terrified .My hand would tremble over the mouse and my stomach would be doing flip flops ... beacause of all that addrelanin in my system Id also have bad stomach which used to send me running to the toilet very 5mins.

When ever I closed out a trade win or lose I would need to go and rinse my face with cold water and then walk back into my office to take the next trade.On one occasion I lost £600 in the AM session of the ftse and was seriously depressed at the thought of having to go back and trade again in the PM session, but I knew if i walked from this .....its over.

Somtimes my execution software would freeze after i clicked buy or sell in the market..

was I filled ?
what price ?
what do i do now ?
Do i try and close ?
quick on the phone ?
engaged...ARGhhhhhhh

Every day i used to say to my self

Can I do this for a living .

We each have a comfort zone .. by pushing yourself into new situations we increase that comfort zone untill 3months down the line what used to seriously scare us , is now an enjoyable experience.

Here are just a few phrases Ive taken from other sites .. They were not written for or about traders ..



Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
-Thomas Edison

Careers, like rockets, don’t always take off on schedule. The key is to keep working on the engines.

The man who moved the mountain began by carrying away small stones.
- Chinese Proverb

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship.
- Aeschylus

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
- Chinese Proverb

Softly, softly, catchee monkey, is the West African rendering of a very valuable precept. An awful lot of men fail through lack of patient persistence.
- Sir Robert Baden-Powell

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do..
- Walter Bagehot

The pleasure of risk is in the control needed to ride it with assurance so that what appears dangerous to the outsider is, to the participant, simply a matter of intelligence, skill, intuition, coordination — in a word, experience.