Afraid of Failure

[Joe Ross]

Are you really afraid to fail as a trader? Have you put so much into your desire to trade? Do you have a wall full of books? Have you invested most of your money? Is it that you feel you don’t dare fail now, but are afraid you will? How do you deal with your fear of failing?

How you think and how you approach life affects how you approach trading. If you are extremely fearful, you are not going to be willing to take risks. The ultimate result of this is that you may be afraid to put on a trade. Your expectations, whether conscious or unconscious, have a powerful influence on your trading performance.

As traders we face many common fears. We are afraid of being wrong. We fear losing money. One of the greatest fears is that of missing a trade. Some of us are afraid we are leaving money on the table. All of these are different sides of the same box – fear of failure.

So how do we handle fear of failure? We have to recognize the basic assumptions that underlie the fear and counteract them.

Generally, rather than come face to face with our fears, we avoid dealing with them. We may even deny their existence. However, it can be useful to simply identify our erroneous underlying assumptions and change them. When we change our assumptions, we really are changing ourselves.

We need to know what causes the fear of failure. Some of us feel that we must be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving. But the truth is that you do not have to be that way. Holding such a belief produces fear and anxiety. If you are a trader, fear and anxiety can produce hesitation and self-doubt.

Traders who believe they must be competent spend their time worrying about what they did wrong, what may go wrong, and how they will recover should they fail. They are, in effect, distracted by their own thoughts, and have programmed themselves for failure.

You cannot afford to allow fear of failure to interfere with your trading success. You don't have to be perfect. As any professional trader will tell you, you are going to make mistakes from time to time, and if you are totally immersed in avoiding them, you'll be so anxious and fearful that you will make even more mistakes. Tell yourself that it is not practical to believe that you must be thoroughly competent. You don’t have to be the greatest achiever. Realize that, as a trader, you cannot live up to a standard of perfection. If you strive to be perfect, it may actually lead you to the very failure you are trying to avoid.

[walterw]

Very nice inputs Mr. Joe Ross... I think we are priviledged to have you here aboard at TL ¡¡ I always liked the simplicity at the same time efectivnes of your aproaches... hope we can really get to interact with you.

About this pressure to perfection you talk about, unfortunately many traders we had to learn it the hard way... Normally newbies have a hard time to believe this great truths, they are so enthusiatic and self confident that they think perfection is posibble... In my experience I learned the hard way, now I really do understand what you are talking about here and on my skin...

Once again welcome aboard.... cheers Walter.

[rolange]

	Quote:	walterw
	Very nice inputs Mr. Joe Ross... I think we are priviledged to have you here aboard at TL ¡¡ I always liked the simplicity at the same time efectivnes of your aproaches... hope we can really get to interact with you. About this pressure to perfection you talk about, unfortunately many traders we had to learn it the hard way... Normally newbies have a hard time to believe this great truths, they are so enthusiatic and self confident that they think perfection is posibble... In my experience I learned the hard way, now I really do understand what you are talking about here and on my skin... Once again welcome aboard.... cheers Walter.

For those who were not here earlier, two posts (including one of my own) have been deleted.

The removal of the posts questioning Joe Ross' motives is IMO totally against the spirit of a public forum and you Walter have done yourself and this site a great disservice by imposing these measures.

Very disappointing.

[TinGull]

	Quote:	rolange
	For those who were not here earlier, two posts (including one of my own) have been deleted. The removal of the posts questioning Joe Ross' motives is IMO totally against the spirit of a public forum and you Walter have done yourself and this site a great disservice by imposing these measures. Very disappointing.

Rolange,

On this forum we don't condone negative remarks towards anyone. If you have an issue with someone, you can take it up with them personally. This is a forum for sharing, not creating a negative image.

[rolange]

	Quote:	TinGull
	Rolange, On this forum we don't condone negative remarks towards anyone. If you have an issue with someone, you can take it up with them personally. This is a forum for sharing, not creating a negative image.

Fine. But what happened to the two posts that were removed and who removed them?

If this kind of censorship is to be exercised on this site then I and many more will not want to have any part of it.

[TinGull]

I have no idea who it was that removed your posts. If you don't want any part of someone removing posts that are seen to some as callous, then by all means, take that sort of talk away from here. That kind of post that you made belongs on EliteTrader.

[rolange]

	Quote:	TinGull
	I have no idea who it was that removed your posts. If you don't want any part of someone removing posts that are seen to some as callous, then by all means, take that sort of talk away from here. That kind of post that you made belongs on EliteTrader.

Excuse me!

So you did see my post and there was nothing offensive about it whatsoever.

I was actually quite correctly alerting the perhaps novice traders to the fact that Joe Ross is a vendor and he wants us to pay him for his indicators and systems.

Also I was applauding this site for its refreshing lack of commercial bias.

I now suspect the above was incorrect.

A pity.

[TinGull]

Rolange, if there was any bit of commercialism in Joe Ross's post, then by all means I would be the first one to shut it down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see not one sentence in his post asking people to visit his website to buy his indicators. Is that correct?

And yes, I saw your post before someone deleted it. And yes, I felt it was offensive to the original poster. He in no way was advocating his services.

A pity? It's a pity that this conversation is STILL going on. Thread is now closed.