Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Traders Discipline and Will Power

Today’s article from Innerworth gives us some insight into traders’ discipline and our ability to maintain it. Don’t underestimate your self beliefs and the power they over you. It’s like swimming with or against the tide. Swim with it, you are generally less stressed and your bound to move further more quickly. Don't lose hope as you can also change your beliefs about your discipline to follow through and succeed.

Please enjoy

Cheers

Brian

www.EducatedWealthSolutions.com

Wealth Education for Life


One of the biggest challenges of novice traders is sticking with their trading plans. Rather than show self-control, many traders abandon trading plans prematurely. There are various factors that may influence traders' abilities to remain disciplined, but one set of factors concerns beliefs and attitudes about willpower.

What are your beliefs about willpower? Do you believe that a person's ability to show self-control is limited or do you believe it's possible to increase your ability to show greater self-control when necessary? In other words, do you believe that willpower is fixed and limited or malleable and unlimited? A recent study by researchers Anirban Mukhopadhyay and Gita Johar (2005) illustrates that beliefs about willpower influence people's ability to follow through on their plans.

Study participants were classified as believing that willpower was either malleable or limited. Participants made plans for achieving a specific goal, and researchers followed them over time to see if they actually stuck with their plans and achieved their goals. Results of the study suggested that people's beliefs about willpower predicted whether or not they stuck with their plans. People who believed that willpower was changeable and unlimited tended to stick with their plans and achieved their goals. People who believed that willpower was something that people were born with, limited, and unchangeable tended to give up on their plans. An interesting aspect of this study concerned people's beliefs in their abilities. People who believed that they had a high level of ability, in that they thought they could easily achieve their goals, tended to stick with their plans until they gained success, regardless of whether they believed that willpower was malleable or fixed. This finding suggests that it doesn't matter what you believe regarding your willpower if the goal you're striving for is easy to achieve.

These findings have a direct bearing on novice traders' ability to stick with their trading plans. Novice traders who believe that their ability to exhibit self-control is limited, and question their general trading ability, will abandon their trading plans. Novice traders who believe that their ability to exhibit willpower is endless will stick with their plans, even though they may question their trading ability. So, if you are a novice trader, it is essential that you monitor your beliefs about your willpower. If you believe that you can't show willpower and self-control, and that it is something you are born with that you can't possibly change, then it will be difficult to stay disciplined.

Although it may be difficult to maintain discipline, it may be easier than you think it is. If you can change your beliefs about your ability to stay disciplined, you'll increase your odds of sticking with your trading plan. Don't underestimate your ability to stay disciplined. You can stay disciplined if you try, and when you stay disciplined, you'll trade decisively and profitably.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Gratitude

I always believe in being grateful. There are just soooo many benefits, not only to yourself, but to those around you as well.

Here is an article written by one of my early mentors Kim Reilly on the the subject of gratitude. Again we look at servicing our millionaire mindset and exercising our emotional intelligence muscle.

Please enjoy.
Cheers
Brian

You are no doubt aware by personal experience, it is impossible to create something from the formless without first creating the vision in your mind. In doing this you set the wheels of creation in motion. All that remains is for its delivery to you.

I will use the analogy of the internet to explain how GRATITUDE fits in to this process. Gratitude is like your internet connection. If you want to download something from the formless, or the internet, you must have a solid connection. Any breaks or disturbances in that connection will result in a failed transmission. Well the same is true of gratitude.

Gratitude keeps you ‘connected’ to the formless intelligence which is about to deliver your request. Gratitude also ensures that you rise above any competition and maintain your faith and purpose. This is critical to your success and it requires some thought and contemplation.
It is easy to be grateful after the event. Real GRATITUDE is not simply paying lip service to thanking something, or something. The words ‘Thank you’ are so overused in our society that they have become meaningless. Have you ever counted the amount of times two people say ‘thank you’ during an ‘Eftpos’ or electronic payment transaction. You hand over the goods and the attendant says ‘thank you’, you then hand them your card and once again, ‘thank you’.

They process your card and hand you a receipt, you respond, ‘thank you’. They hand you a pen to sign with and you say ‘thank you.’ You sign the paper and hand it back, they say ‘thank you.’ They put your goods in the bag and hand them to you saying yet again ‘thank you.’ You feel awkward if you don’t respond, so another ‘thank you’ is necessary before you can leave the building. A total of 7 ‘thank you’s’ accompany every transaction you do so if you average 4 purchases a day, its no wonder ‘thank you’ is meaningless.

Gratitude, on the other hand is seldom apparent. Most of my life was spent moaning and complaining about how bad the country was and how bad the government was and essentially how bad everything was. Until I began traveling through Asia . I began to realize that things were not so bad at home, and that I was really grateful to be who I am, living where I live and doing all the things I was doing. This is the rock upon which most become shipwrecked. For gratitude to truly work, it must be truly given. I must also be evident before any events take place. The mind which is constantly focused on gratitude is the mind which is drawing closer and closer to the formless intelligence.

To let your thoughts wander to those of lack or of poverty or hardship, is to undo any creative work you have done. This was another crystal clear realization for me to discover that not only had I not been patient, and invested the required time doing what was necessary, at the first sign that something was not going to plan, I would react by blaming someone or something else for it. Not once did I consider the possibility that what I thought should happen, may not necessarily be the most effective, or productive way for the natural order of things to work.

Every event is perfect in and of itself. This is not to say you must give all you power over to fate. You always have a choice. That is to say that although you have an outcome in mind, you may not necessarily be aware of the most expeditious or beneficial way to see it through. For me, it seemed as though the more clarity I would get on an event, an the more rehearsed and definite I saw it, the more times it would fail in a completely perfect manner. That was until I was able to step back and look at the ‘big picture’.

This way of thinking was illustrated to me during my time as a navigator at sea. For a ship to successfully transit from one port to another, it is essential that a plan be drawn out onto the relevant charts. To begin this ‘passage plan’ I would start with a chart that preferably showed both the destination and the port of origin. To this chart I would apply a ‘mean’ line of approach, to give me a basic calculation of course, speed etc. Once this line had been created I could then transfer the ‘mean’ line to the larger scale charts. These charts would only show a portion of the journey, although they give a much clearer representation of any impending dangers, or things to be avoided, which are not apparent on the large chart. Sometimes, a detour of several miles may be necessary to avoid a reef or a shipwreck or some other hazard.

By looking at the big picture alone, these minor course alterations seem wasteful and even useless, yet they are vital for a safe passage. On the other hand, looking at each chart individually, the destination is not always apparent.

In a sense navigating at sea, is much the same as the processes which I am discussing here. It is vital to have a ‘big picture’ which contains both where you are, and where you want to go. During the voyage, however, things happen which at the time seem senseless or even wrong. At these times, more than ever, you must rely on Gratitude, Faith and Purpose, that your plan is definite, your ship is sound, and every day you are closing the gap between you and your destination.

Gratitude is the only method by which faith can be borne. In constantly fixing your mind on the formless with gratitude for what you have not yet received, you guarantee it will come to you, or you will arrive at it. Everything in your world has been brought to you in exactly the way you have asked for it. This may challenge your beliefs, or even cause you to become angry or frustrated. This is the regression of which I speak. The moment your mind is allowed to look on things as less than perfect is the moment all creation is brought to a halt.

Don’t concern yourself with the misery of others or their wrong doings or shortfalls. See your world as constantly expanding and experiencing more life. The life force has worked long and hard to bring humanity to the stage it is at and it is perfect. Like our passage plan, sometimes it may not look or feel how we would like it to, yet the infinite intelligence, which is in all and works through all, has a script with which you are playing the lead role. Put your unwavering Faith in the Director and fix your mind in constant Gratitude that you have been chosen to deliver the star performance. This is the source of all power.

Moving Forward With Thea Westra


Thea offers an easy access life coaching web service. A low cost and simple option for anyone who would like to experience using a life coach.

Thea Westra lives in Perth Australia with her partner Greg. She enjoys reading, creating inspiring online resources, meeting for coffee to have conversations with like-minded friends, watching inspiring movies, exploring internet resources in the area of personal development and a variety of creative expressions, both on and off-line.

She holds several degrees in the field of education, has studied countless personal growth videos/audios/books, plus participated in and contributed to, many self-development programs over 17 years.

Thea opened the doors to her coaching business in 2002, working with clients locally and internationally. She now uses the internet as her preferred medium for contributing to you. As a result of this redirection, she has renamed the "What does Thea do?" element of Forward Steps to that of "Forward Steps Maven", and removing her one-to-one coaching service.

Regardless of professional endeavour or place in life, all Forward Steps site visitors and subscribers have one thing in common: they are all successful, resourceful, and intelligent individuals who want to get even more out of their lives.

Forward Steps is all about just that ...forward steps. Her mantra is that "Each forward step enhances the value of your first".

No matter what our endeavour or goals, we need to keep moving forward. Not much happens when you are at a standstill. It's even extremely difficult to change course when you are standing still!

We are always learning and experiencing new things. Of course, things will still come at us, when we are standing still. However, we have much more power in determining our future when we are the ones taking very deliberate and personally chosen forward steps, towards our intended target.

"If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking"...Buddhist Proverb

Click here www.forwardsteps.com.au and meet an expert.

Extra links


http://www.forwardsteps.com.au, http://www.ask-thea-about.com, http://bestezines.com/?Triggers&id=1417
http://www.forwardsteps.com.au/FSBlogs.htm
http://freemoneyebook.com/dlthea.html