Throw Your Hat Over The Wall
I realize this is a trading service and a trading blog, but I was thinking over the weekend about success in general.
By definition, success requires an above average level of performance or achievement. Therefore, not everyone can be successful. In the financial markets there must be losers in order to have winners.
One could argue that just because your trade made money means that someone else lost. But in my opinion it is not that black and white. People take losses on some positions, while gaining in others. Using options as they were intended (as insurance) springs to mind as a good example of this.
However, in general it is a well-established concept that most people that try and conquer the financial markets lose money. It is what it is. Trading is not easy, not by a long stretch, and using the definition above again, it does require a level of mastery that is “above average”.
Whatever your accepted definition, those who are successful in anything succeed regardless of intelligence and have an overwhelming desire to achieve that level of success. Most billionaires on the planet don’t have a university degree and were even high school drop outs.
The key in order to succeed is to simply refuse to accept any obstacles put in your path and somehow, fueled by a burning desire, do whatever is necessary to find a way. In that sense winners make themselves available to learn from their mistakes and therefore commit to a journey of personal development.
Last year I heard a speaker use the term “throw your hat over the wall”. This was her definition of success. She visualized standing in front of a huge brick wall that looked simply too high to scale. Armed with knowing that what she wanted was on the other side of this wall, she took off her hat and tossed it over the wall…and she was going to get her hat back, no matter what!
The interesting difference with success in trading verses most if not all other great endeavors is perception. It is seen as more achievable. For example there are very little barriers to entry. Anyone with a small amount of capital and an IQ above room temperature can have a go. It takes 5 years to qualify as a Doctor and another ten or so to reach the pinnacle of one’s specialism in the medical world. If you challenge your perspective and view trading as a profession why should it be any different?
I was not an overnight success….geez, I wish. I have 10+ years of trading scars, some I will probably never even share despite the fact that I am now very successful at this and can only laugh at my past failures. I accept that they were necessary lessons that led me to the place I am at right now. Persistence and a thirst for knowledge and understanding to get better and better and better at it is what has left me with a feeling of certainty of success no matter what the chaotic world of the financial markets throws at me…With the greatest humility, I know I WILL WIN!
The added bonus for me is that anyone that follows me ends up with the same outcome…In fact I am better because I share my strategy. As Les Brown puts it “Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours”.