Vadym,
"HOW" to do is a personal journey that must come from an internal motivation to learn. If one is really motivated, there will be tons of materials and methods at your fingertips without really trying.
One of my best strategy is to read, read, and read. By flooding my mind and ego with new information from different writers and traders, my thought process began to form a mental blueprint of what it takes to be a great trader. After so many books, my mind began to discover a common theme of what will work for me. The other aspect of continuous reading is that it kept your mind and thought process occupied with relevant and productive information. If one read a single book (or even several) and stopped at that point, one's mind might get off-track again after several down day. Doubt began to resurface... the regular day-to-day ego began to dominate again... and it would take great effort to redirect that negative energy away.
Reading provides the disciplined ego a support system that is a total sum of all the excellent stories of human spirits. This support system encourages our disciplined ego to strive for excellence; therefore, providing the basic foundation for one to be patient, to be persistent, and to be able to endure.
Personally, I have read book range from autobiography of our Presidents, great sportsmen and athletes, hunters (Jim Corbett being my favorite), professional traders (commodity and stock), and survivors of different dire circumstances. All their histories and experiences provide a major source of inspiration for me.
Unfortunately, in today's modern society, the habit of reading has many competition. Computers, internet, video games, movies, TV, etc. all provide a very legitimate threat to usurp our time. Thus, finding time to read, by itself, require a strong motivation on our part. This bring us back to square one:
"HOW" to do is a personal journey that must come from an internal motivation to learn.
Another benefit of reading is that it fortifies the habit of focus.
If you don't focus, you will not absorb what you read. It's that simple. Trading/hunting/Sporting all require good solid focus to succeed. Trading requires a LOT of focus to find the setup. Hunting requires a LOT of focus to find the prey among all the bushes and trees. I leave the sporting example to yourself... <g>
The unique thing about trading is that those setups you are looking for only materialize in a matter of seconds and disappear. Like a cloud that formed a shape and then disappeared when you looked up again. So, if you are not focusing, you will miss the setup.
Another strategy I like to do is to listen to music. In my case, I prefer classical music. Have you try to flow with the music without thinking about something in your head? Sound easy but actually pretty difficult. What I do is to relax myself and see how long I can flow with the music before I start thinking about something. The longer I can flow with the music without thinking, the better I get in focusing. After all, watching the tape or flowing with the chart take the same kind of discipline in listening and flowing with the music. It requires the same principle of focusing except that one require your hearing sense and the other require your visual sense.
My other strategy I like to do is to practice martial arts. Martial arts require discipline, focus, and harmony with your body and mind. A perfect recipe to be a good trader. In my case, I practice Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan- a form of internal martial arts discovered in ancient China.
Meditation is also in my to do list. I use the breath following techniques as well as using Transcendental Meditation (aka TM) (http://www.tm.org/). I like TM because all I got to do is to repeat my mantra in my head and my body would begin to relax all on its own. I also use Silva Method to help me with my visualization exercise (http://r1.us.rmi.yahoo.com/rmi/http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp/rmivars%3ftarget=_top?sourceid=00339421582271887487&bfdate=01-26-2001+18:35:40&WRD=silva+method).
In summary, the above is my own personal way of training my disciplined ego. It helps me to strengthen my relationship with myself, my disciplined ego, and fortify an understanding with my regular ego. Perhaps, the word "control" is too harsh a word to use in the circular loop; thus, I'm going to modify the circular loop once again:
"If you can train your thought, you can train your emotion. If you can train your emotion, you can train your thought. Only if you have developed the discipline to train your thought to begin with."
Thus, IMHO, how well you do in trading will depend on your motivation. You can usually find out how motivated you are by asking yourself what you've done so far to train yourself for the purpose of trading well. Only you will know. There is no right or wrong answer, only a new resolve to pick up from where you left off.
All in my opinion only, of course.
Cheers! |
