Fear The Fear Of Death
"Do you then ponder how the supreme of human evils, the surest mark of the base and cowardly, is not death, but the fear of death? I urge you to discipline yourself against such fear, direct all your thinking, exercises, and reading this way — and you will know the only path to human freedom."
— Epictetus, Discourses
I can't even begin to compare today's meditation to trading. This is probably one of the heaviest and deepest meditations so far!
When we analyse fear in trading, it is usually because we are worrying or stressing that a trade will go against us. But what if we could avoid the fear of this happening?
When we are researching for potential trades, we are trusting and relying on the historical stats/data that we have available to us and then ensuring that all of the rules/criteria for our strategies, are fully met for those trades to become viable.
However, as we all know, anything can happen during a trade! If we can be totally focused with a neutral mindset and prepared for the unexpected to happen, we can be ready to react in a heartbeat, to what we are seeing and control a loss at an acceptable pre-agreed exit point and therefore protect our bank in the process.
If you can make a vow to yourself, to never let a potential loss get bigger than your pre-agreed exit point. If you can ensure that you pull the trigger to exit, before each and every trade that is going against you becomes unmanageable; then you are in control.
Remember that these trades that don't go to plan, will be nowhere near as often as the trades that are successful. If you can manage these occasional losing trades correctly, you can be confident that you will be profitable in the long term.
You will also have eased the worry or stress that a trade may go against you, because you can be confident that if this happens, you have already proved to yourself, that you can react to the situation and manage the loss accordingly.
The more you practice, the more confident you will become!
It's all down to you, if you can rise to the challenge! It can be done and you can do it for sure!