What Is In Keeping With Your Character?
"Just as what is considered rational or irrational differs for each person, in the same way what is good or evil and useful or useless differs for each person. This is why we need education, so that we might learn how to adjust our preconceived notions of the rational and irrational in harmony with nature. In sorting this out, we don't simply rely on our estimate of the value of external things, but also apply the rule of what is in keeping with one's character."
— Epictetus, Discourses
Another tough one to compare today's meditation to trading, but we do need to have the right character to trade successfully.
It is so easy to get wrapped up in what others are doing or saying, because everybody will have their own opinions on how a trade will go. Because we have our own rules/criteria that have to be fully met for our strategies, we are less inclined to be tempted or swayed by other peoples views. This is because we have formed our own opinion based on the stats/data that we have available to us and we trust this to work over a long period of time. We place trust in what we are doing because it works long term. We trust the process implicitly and stick to it 100% of the time. We know that every trade is not going to go our way and that is why we manage every trade to completion. We know if a trade is turning against us, we have the confidence to cut it short at a manageable stage to protect our bank, which is our primary objective of course.
We have to be confident in what we are doing and be "in the zone" every time that we enter a trade. There are no shortcuts and we can't afford to have any distractions, so that we can manage our trades, should we need to. This is how we have educated ourselves as traders and we are evolving all the time, striving to become better and better.
The more we do this and stick to our rules, the more confident we will become and of course we get to know our strategies inside out and back to front.
All of this trading behaviour is character building, which in turn makes us stronger to pursue our goals on our trading journey.