Always Have A Mental Reverse Clause
"Indeed, no one can thwart the purposes of your mind — for they can't be touched by fire, steel, tyranny, slander, or anything."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
A very interesting meditation for today and this can be also used in trading!
We can for example always retain a "reverse clause" for when it is needed! If a trade goes against us and we don't exit when we should've done to manage the loss and protect our bank, we look at exactly what went wrong and analyse it to make sure that we learn from our mistake.
Like it states in today's meditation and I quote; "Our progress can be impeded or disrupted, but the mind can always be changed--it retains the power to redirect the path." So instead of getting angry because we didn't manage our trade as well as we should've done, we redirect the path to what we should be doing. This means no revenge trading and jumping into trades that don't fully meet our criteria, because we are desperate to get back what we have just lost immediately! Instead we continue to stick to our plan with the patience and discipline required and make sure that we don't repeat the same mistake again.
This is trading in a nut shell and we won't win every trade of course; but what we can do, with enough hard work and practice, is control the amount that we lose at a manageable level. This means that our bank is protected and we become profitable long term, because the more regular profitable trades far outweigh the occasional controlled loss.
So again, quoting the last paragraph of today's meditation; "Part of this is remembering the usual course of things--Murphy's law states that if anything can go wrong, it will. So we keep this reverse clause handy because we know we're probably going to have to use it. No one can thwart that."
Remember that trading is in our own hands and how we react when things go wrong, can have a big impact on our future trading mindset.
In summary, if we "always have a mental reverse clause" we can stay patient, disciplined and fully focused with the correct trading mindset to succeed long term.