Reprinted from the Safety in the Market Spring 1994 Ticker Tape
Written by Dr Harry Stanton
In my consultancy work with the business community, I am often called upon to work with people who have lost confidence in their ability to sell. This is usually a result of fear of rejection. Once such a fear gains a hold, a salesperson becomes so frightened by rejection that they find it almost impossible to make the phone calls necessary to set up contacts and appointments. In many ways, this is similar to traders who, because of their fear of losing, cannot ‘pull the trigger’ when their technical analysis indicates a trade should be taken.
An approach I have found to be particularly helpful at such times is that of reframing. In simple terms, this means encouraging people to look at situations in ways differently from those they are at present using. No matter what the situation may be, it can be viewed in different ways, some of these empowering and some self-defeating. Allowing fear of losing to inhibit trading is certainly the latter.
The concept of failure may serve as an example. A trader makes an unsuccessful trade and he is stopped out at a loss. He regards this as a failure and feels bad about it. Several such events, all labelled ‘failure’, undermine his confidence to such an extent that his chances of future success become increasingly less.
However, no one makes him label his experience this way. He chooses to do so. Instead, he could use the most powerful reframe there is, that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. In other words, he considers what he can learn from his experience that will be of value in the future. He may choose to reframe his experience of being stopped out as:
- an opportunity to learn more about himself as a person and about the trading system he is using;
- the negative information he needs to have so that he can change course in a more positive direction, either in the way he handles his emotions when trading or in the way he is using his trading system;
- an opportunity to develop his sense of humour by laughing at his errors as soon as possible after making them. We need to remind ourselves that things are worth what we make them worth and, so often, we make molehills into mountains. One way of overcoming this lack of perspective is to rate the things that happen to you on an anxiety/stress scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most anxiety-provoking or stressful thing that could possibly happen to you. In a seminar I conducted for bank executives on stress management, one participant said his wife had died four years ago and that was a 10, the worst thing that he could imagine happening to him. Since then, nothing had ever rated more than 1, even though these were events to which his colleagues had reacted with anxiety bordering on panic; and
- an opportunity to practice his techniques and perfect his performance. Consider life’s events as exercises providing the opportunity for personal growth, for finding out how to handle yourself emotionally and for learning how you can manage your life more successfully.
If you reframe failure in one or more of these above ways, you cannot be beaten. Negatives can be transformed into positives, not by attempting to force them out of your mind, which most people find impossible to achieve, but by using them as signals to cue you into more empowering ways of thinking. Never underestimate the power of the words and the way you talk to yourself, for your inner dialogue exerts a tremendous influence on the way you think.
Whenever you identify such negative input, stop and deliberately tell yourself something strengthening, something positive. In other words, be your own best friend, acting as such a friend would do by supporting and encouraging yourself. As you identify the negative “I’ve lost again. I’ll never succeed as a trader” you welcome the comment as an opportunity to tell yourself, “I’ll keep working, using this information and I’ll get better and better. I’m a winner”. It does not matter whether what you tell yourself is ‘true’ or not, for truth is relative. Just say it, or something like it, at every opportunity. Your deeper mind, the inner unconscious mind, seems to operate like a computer, working on the programs it is given. Tell yourself you are a loser and cannot succeed and it will believe you. You will certainly be a loser. Tell yourself that hard work is making you a winner and it will believe that too.
A way of making the positive message more powerful is one I discuss in my book The Success Factor. I call it ‘remaking the day’. Each evening, take about 10 minutes to get away quietly by yourself, relax a little, and go back over your performance. One at a time, mentally re-create things that have gone well for you. Relive them in your imagination, a number of times, congratulating yourself on these successes. Then, turn to the things that have not gone well for you. One at a time, eliminate them from your mind and imagine yourself re-doing them the way you would have preferred. Do this re-run about half a dozen times.
Because your mind does not distinguish between this imaginative reworking of your experience and the actual event, you may have made the mistake once, but now you are doing it correctly six times. The success outweighs the failure six to one, and if you regularly practice remaking your day so that it is perfect, you will find that gradually your performance becomes better and better. You are programming your mind for success and wiping away the failures.
People who have not tapped into the power of this very simple technique dismiss it as useless daydreaming. However, many successful people have no compunction about acknowledging that they frequently daydream as a means of inspiring them to achieve particular goals. In other words, they use daydreams as a form of self-motivation. Remaking your performance is just that, a way of guiding your imagination towards the objectives you see as desirable.
This technique of remaking the day is very applicable to trading. Graham is a full-time trader who was losing confidence in himself due to the number of mistakes he was making. To remedy this problem, every evening he spent a few minutes ‘remaking his trading performance’. Firstly, he would concentrate on a few good points, such as he kept his charts up to date, he identified a support area that held, and he successfully identified a Point C as a Smarter Starter Pack trade. He took each in turn and replayed it in his mind several times, congratulating himself upon his success.
He then identified a few mistakes such as talking himself out of taking the trade, becoming negative when he saw the missed opportunity and blaming himself for his indecision. Again, he would concentrate upon each in turn only this time he would wipe the mistake from his mind and imagine himself doing it right. The negative self-talk was transformed into positive action; the missed opportunity became the beginning of a successful trade; the self-blame became the opportunity for a quiet ‘well done’. The secret is to catch yourself doing something right and praise yourself. Do not search for opportunities to blame yourself for doing something wrong. Make this your guiding light and you will create within yourself the power to succeed both as a trader and as the creator of a far better life for yourself.