Doing the right things at the right time

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If you give it a thought, trading is all about doing the right things at the right time. If this is what you do, you will definitely be successful. However, I already hear the voices saying: “Yeah, easier said than done…” If you’re one of these voices, hold on for a moment, and stay open-minded 🙂 .

After some time spent on the market, your mind already knows what to do and when to do, because it has learned it by observation and repetition. So, you’ve got the skills and are capable of doing the right things at the right time. The only factors which stop you from actually performing this way are your emotions and mental patterns. How often did it happen that you wanted to do something on the market, or felt that something should or should not be done, but started to rationalize, or got stressed, and did the very opposite? In the end, it turned out that if you had done what you wanted to do in the beginning, you would have earned money, but you didn’t and ended up with a loss. If you have had such experiences, then you probably already know what it means to do the right things at the right time. The only things you have to deal with is the internal sabotage, which stops you from using this knowledge and your skills.

We discovered all that with my wife, who by the way is a personal development coach, when she started to coach me after we had realized, that something was still blocking my success in trading. During one of our sessions I shouted out: “It happened again! It did not go, as it was supposed to”, and Sophia asked me to feel into the following: what should I be doing for my trading to be successful. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said without really thinking: “Do the right things at the right time”. So, we decided to program my subconscious, to do the right things at the right time. There may be many factors that cause self-sabotage, and we have been approaching them in separate sessions, but at that point, we decided that using a simple technique of reprogramming the subconscious will not hurt. So, I made a wallpaper for my desktop with the quote: “Do the right things at the right time” and installed it on my computer. Now, whenever I look at my desktop, I see and read it, even if I don’t do it consciously. You know, the repetition principle is clearly at work here.

Do the right things at the right time

A few days later I realized that during trading, I repeat to myself in my thoughts: “Do the right things at the right time”, although I was thinking and doing something different at the very same time! Now I can tell you for certain that our assumptions worked. The quality of my trading, as well as the decision-making process improved. The results were better too. And most importantly, I didn’t experience a single moment of stress or hesitation during the whole week of trading, although it was packed with risk events, like rate decisions from the Fed and ECB, as well as NFP data. I guess it’s because my subconscious finally knew and was confident about what I should be doing. I should be doing the right things at the right time. Obviously, the thought patterns and programs causing self-sabotage won’t magically disappear only because decide to do the right things at the right time, and they have to be reprogrammed as well. However, the decision to do the right things at the right time and effort to program our subconscious so that it works this way is a good starting point. Note that doing the right things at the right time in the case of trading means also being fully in the process, and not doing anything else. This also includes not thinking about anything else. I used to have problems with that – I wrote about it in a different post: How to stay focused while trading

If you would like to give this a try, below you will find links to the wallpaper I created. Help yourself 🙂 I made it in a few additional formats, so I guess the most popular screen resolutions are covered. Enjoy!