I love Thanksgiving. I think it is a great
holiday. What better reason for a celebration than to take time to
appreciate all your blessings. I’m not just talking about your possessions,
but the greater blessings of health, family, and our own personal abilities
as well.
Thanksgiving should be a year round
holiday; however we only assign one day a year to being “thankful”. The
rest of the time we’re busy with “getting” and acquiring more and more
things. We get so busy working and “getting” that we often lose focus of
why we are doing these things in the first place.
However, did you know that being thankful
can not only make you happier, but improve your abilities as a trader as
well?
Not to get into too much psycho-babble,
but it is a well known truth that you tend to get what you focus your
attention on. Therefore if you are always thinking about what is lacking in
your life, you tend to experience even greater wants, yet if you
concentrate on all the blessings you already have, you will tend to get
even more blessings.
Ever notice how when things go right,
almost everything goes right and when things go wrong, everything goes
wrong? This is the same idea. When things go right you feel on top of the
world. You can do no wrong. You make decisions with confidence and are not
at all surprised when they turn out as you expected.
Yet when things go wrong, you have a
tendency to concentrate on things going wrong, which only leads to more
things going wrong. After a while this can become a vicious cycle which can
eventually lead to depression and despair.
Now, it is only human nature to focus on
what we need. In fact, if it is a serious need it is sometimes hard to
think of anything else. This can be especially true when it comes to money.
It may be true that money can’t buy
happiness, but a lack of money will sure bring you unhappiness. If you
don’t have enough money to get by then it is hard to think of anything
else. However concentrating on what you do not have will usually only make
the situation worse. This, of course, is the exact opposite of what you
want to happen.
The same is true of trading. If you are
always afraid of losing money in your trades, then you are letting the
emotions of fear and greed take over your thinking, and guess what is
likely to be the result? Yep, you guessed it; you will be more likely to
lose money trading.
Now this is not to say that you should not
be prudent with your trades. You need to make certain decisions to protect
your position and maximize your profits; however these decisions come from
a different place than do the decisions based on the emotions of fear and
greed.
So how do you get around fear and greed
and the problem of getting what you do not want? Simple. By being thankful
for what you already have.
How many times have you exited a trade
with a small profit only to watch the market take off without you? Do you
berate yourself for the money you “lost” instead of being thankful for the
profit you earned? If you’re like most people you are thinking more about
all the money you could have made instead of the money you did make. This
is not having a thankful attitude.
You need to learn to be thankful for the
profit you did make and to take the attitude of learning from your
“mistake” so that you will not repeat it in the future (as an aside – you
should know right here and now that you will repeat this mistake several
times, so you may as well get used to it. No one ever catches every major
move…me included).
Having this type of attitude will help
take the pressure off of your trades and will hopefully allow you to become
a better trader in the process. I can tell you from personal experience
that it does help.
An attitude of thankfulness raises your
emotions above those of fear and greed. Sometimes this is enough to help
you see things more clearly and make better decisions. Other times, a
thankful attitude will make you more aware of opportunities as they present
themselves.
Either way, by being more thankful for all
your blessings, not just your material ones, you will be concentrating your
mind on bringing more good things into your life, instead of the bad things
you do not really want.
Remember, when you focus on the good
things in your life you will have a tendency to get more good things, and
if you focus on the bad things in your life you will have a tendency to get
more bad things.
In the end, the choice is yours to make.
So why not try having an attitude of thankfulness year round, instead of
just one day a year?
-Erich
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How Thanksgiving Can Make
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