The Major Self-Limiting Beliefs of Your Trading Success

We are not born to be traders!

We grow up under our parents rules;

We go to school and study under teachers rules and an education system;

We work and earn money under our bosses rules.

Most of the traders do not acknowledge it until the pain of losses forces them to see what they have been avoiding.

We never had the opportunity to make our own rules! It happens that in trading, it is the trader who creates the rules to guide his/her own behavior! And that's why this is a skill that goes against all the common beliefs society impose on us. Most of the traders do not acknowledge them until the pain of losses forces them to see what they have been avoiding.

The process of a trader and his/her journey to become successful takes a long time and that's with a reason:

• We were never taught the necessary skills to succeed in this industry, so we need time to develop them.

• As a child needs time to learn how to talk and walk, a trader needs time to learn to detach from money, be patient and idependent!

Here, are the biggest limiting beliefs that act as barriers for your trading success:

"The harder I work, the more money I get"

This is the 9 to 5 mentality working in trading.

In the same way personal worth becomes tied to money (so that self-worth = net worth) many traders believe they have to work hard for their money, and if they don’t work hard, they do not deserve to make easy money. Others don’t believe they deserve to be making beyond a certain level of money. And every time they go beyond that glass ceiling, they sabotage themselves.

These traders can make good profits but they fail to keep them because they simply think they don't deserve them. Although they don't consciously think about it, it's in their deeper beliefs, in their subconscious mind.

This belief leads traders to several trading mistakes as:

• Overtrading, because they only feel they are progressing by being active on the market. They need to feel they're traders and the only way they feel this is when they trade.

• Disregarding the importance of preparation and only focus on executions, thinking that's what makes them grow.

• Patience is not a valuable skill for them because the only meaning they associate with it is inaction and stagnation. This couldn't be further from the truth. In trading, patience is 80% of your profits.

"Trading will fix my financial problems"

If you get into trading to make money right away, you're set to failure!

Money only comes as a consequence of all your commitment, dedication, discipline and a set of other skills that you only gain in the course of your trading process. This belief works completely against your profits. The last thing you wanna put in your trading is pressure to achieve a money goal.

Focus on developing the right psychological skills and maybe after that, you have a chance of winning a few pips. Yes pips, never thinking about money; always in your performance.

"I have to be right to make money"

In trading, concepts like right or wrong doesn't exist. Replace those for profitable and non profitable.

You don't need to know what's the next move to profit from it. It's all about your ability to ride the trade and to take the most out of it.

There are important techniques that offer more consistency long term than others. One of them, is taking partial profits instead of a single target. When you do this, you not only develop the habit of paying yourself more often but you remove a lot of emotion out of the equation. Think with me, if you take partial profits you are more probable to profit from a move you were wrong about; You will also let the trades ride with no worries because you already payed yourself; you already won something out of that trade and that gives you a relief feeling.

We can't control outcomes so the best way we can manage our trades is accept what the market is offering us at the right times.

Don't refuse tot take profits just to see your trade reverse against you and there it is: A trade that could've been a win and it turned out into a loss - lost opportunity!

"If I lose, I failed. If I win, I succeed"

Losses are inevitable. We can't control outcomes nor the market. If you judge your trading quality based on your losses, what you're doing is basically trying to avoid them. Your trading is not dictated by losses and wins but rather by your performance.

"Did I followed my plan?"

The answer to this question responds to all the doubts you have about the quality of your trading. Our behavior is the only thing we can control in our trading so you need to focus on that rather than trying to control the market.

"I need to get the perfect trade with the perfect entry"

These, are traders who not only want to be right, but they wanna be perfect while being right. They want to enter at the wick of the candle that forms the top. They have tendencies to trade tops and bottoms because they wanna catch the whole move. For this reason, they try to predict the market by putting together a bunch of reasons that are outside of the scope of their strategies to justify their trades.

If they make a mistake, they take it as a personal reflection of their competency as a human being.

A common mistake this traders constantly do is adding to losing positions to try to catch the exact top or bottom because they have to be right and perfect.

The way you fix this problem is by recognizing that money is made in the middle of the move. As traders, we don't wanna try to guess bottoms, tops or new trends, we want to already have that confirmation so we can go with the flow.

You need to remind the reason why you entered in this game: to be profitable and not to impress others or our own ego. Perfect makes losers in trading.

Don't fall for this.

"My strategy is making me lose"

Although you need to have a tested strategy that works, most of the times the problem lies in a place further from that: your psychology.

Very often, the problem is not your strategy. It's your lack of discipline to follow it. Blaming external factors as the reason of your failure is always easier than facing your own flaws.

Your strategy is important but you know what's more important? You executing it consistently without changing one single thing about it.

Your performance plays a bigger role than the your strategy itself, believe it or not. No strategy will work for you if you don't fix the root of the problem. You are the only reason of your own sabotage. Until you don't take responsibility for your own trades, trading gonna be a hell for you.

"I'll be disciplined when I trade a bigger account"

You might be already guessing why this is one of the most limiting beliefs.

In trading, 1st comes your efforts without results, which is called commitment, and only then, maybe, you'll start seeing small results overtime. Those small achievements are the product of a huge effort! But the more you remain committed doing the right things, the less efforts you'll need later to get big results.

The more you remain committed doing the right things, the less efforts you'll need later to get big results.

It's very common to see traders starting funded accounts when they didn't developed the necessary psychological skills yet to handle such big amount of money; They are not even consistent in a small account and they think the external factor (trading a bigger account) is what gonna change the inside problem (their psychology).

It's pretty much impossible to be consistently profitable with a large balance if you can't profit with a small balance. Why? Because your bad habits gonna transpose equally, just in a bigger size.

"The more pairs I analyse the more opportunities I have of making money"

Wrong! The more you trade with the wrong approach the more opportunities you have of losing.

More trades doesn't mean more money if you don't have an edge.

The calculated risk to reward is more important than the amount of trades you take. More trades doesn't mean more money if you don't have an edge. Imagine that you take each trade with a different strategy. That means your probabilities to win are reduced to almost 0.

Opportunities lie in probabilities!

These traders tend to analyse every possible forex pair to get as much set ups as they can.

You can make money trading ONE SINGLE forex pair. This is one of the beliefs you need to incorporate in your belief system!

What happens to these traders is that their focus is spread among a lot of pairs. Their focus is on quantity and not quality.

If you focus in learning the price action of one single pair you'll be impressed with how fast your learning curve develops. You'll notice things you would never notice otherwise; you'll learn every single detail about the price action of that specific pair and that gonna permit you to master it. So stop thinking in terms of quantity and opportunities and focus in quality and probabilities.

"Big wins is what makes great traders"

In trading, everybody can win big. But few are the ones who are able to keep the profits.

Big wins happen more often to the trader who is able to cut his/her losses small.

Better psychology skills are required to cut a loss small than to win big.

Of course it's attractive to win big but the secret to profitability in trading is all in capital preservation - protecting what you have to not give it away to the markets.

Conclusion

Self-limiting beliefs cannot be ignored in trading. They are the thorn that keeps causing pain over and over again until they are dealt with. Using your trading journal to diagnose them is an efficient way to discover and solve them. This is where the real work of building the mind of a successful trader takes place.

Trading gives you the opportunity to redevelop your mind and build good habits like any other skill.

It is an enormous opportunity for growth as a trader and as a human being. Make sure to take advantage of it the best way you can.

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In the Trading Psychology Program I work individually with traders to help them identify their limiting beliefs as well as habits that are negatively affecting their trading performance.

I help them setting a plan of action to solve bad habits and implement new ones and together, we work to replace their psychological approach for one that matches their trading goals.

You will find this program way more helpful than a new strategy course.

Reach me anytime...

...and don't forget to go through all these limiting beliefs and see if you own any. If so, make sure to work on it as soon as possible.

The Perceptive Trader