AFRAID OF FAILURE

A great article from my guru Mr. Joe Ross ( www.tradingeducators.com ) I thought it is useful to all of us; fellow traders.

AFRAID OF FAILURE
Are you afraid to fail as a trader? Have you invested a great deal in your desire to trade? Do you have a wall full of books? Have you invested most of your money?

Do you feel that failure is not an option now, but are afraid you will? How do you deal with your fear of failure?

How we think and approach life affects how we approach trading. If we are extremely fearful, we won't be willing to take risks. The end result is that we may be afraid to put on a trade. Our expectations, whether conscious or unconscious, have a powerful influence on our trading performance.
As traders we face many common fears, such as the fear being wrong or of losing money. One of the greatest fears is that of missing a trade. Some of us are afraid we're leaving money on the table. All of these are different sides of the same box ─ the fear of failure.

So how do we handle the fear of failure? We have to recognize the basic assumptions that underlie the fear and counteract them.

Generally, rather than coming face to face with our fears, we avoid dealing with them. We may even deny their existence. However, it can be useful to simply identify our erroneous underlying assumptions and change them. When we change our assumptions, we're really changing ourselves.

We need to know what causes the fear of failure. Some of us feel that we must be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving. But the truth is we don't have to be that way. Holding such a belief produces fear and anxiety. And if you are a trader, that fear and anxiety can produce hesitation and self-doubt.

Traders who believe they must be competent spend their time worrying about what they did wrong, what may go wrong, and how they will recover should they fail. They are, in effect, distracted by their own thoughts and have programmed themselves for failure.

We can't afford to allow the fear of failure to interfere with our trading success. We don't have to be perfect. Any professional trader will tell you that you're going to make mistakes from time to time. If you're totally immersed in avoiding them, you'll be so anxious and fearful that you'll make even more mistakes. Tell yourself that it's not practical to believe that you must be thoroughly competent. You don't have to be the greatest achiever. Realize that as a trader, you can't live up to a standard of perfection.

If we strive to be perfect, it may actually lead us to the very failure we are trying to avoid.