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Maturity in trading is something every trader strives for, with the idea that steadfast application to technical learning is a sure path to success. Except, it doesn't really work that way. What most of us find is that no amount of accumulated learning, no matter how hard we may try, gets us there. In fact, the more we do try, the more we keep looping in that place of stuckness that we're all too familiar with. Why is that?
Consider that the manner in which we approach our trading and that the motivations behind every trade decision, determine the quality of our actions, i.e. our trades. When our motivations are clear to us, when we see exactly what we're doing, and when we are fully aware of the shadow thoughts that keep us looping, our actions begin to have integrity.
Consider that traders tend to think in terms of being right or wrong when making trade decisions. This is an approach to trading that introduces binary thinking, which gives the illusion of safety through the certainty of an answer. But there are no hard and fast answers when it comes to ever-changing markets. The desire for absolute answers of right or wrong fixes our focus to fear and leads us away from discovery. In choosing a binary answer we have rejected the wholeness of information that is available and opted for an incomplete experience of the very thing we are attempting to apprehend. We have set ourselves up to react to our selves, thinking all the while that we are responding to markets. We have given away our power of sight and intelligence.
Consider this example. You're deciding between a left-sided pivot entry long and a right-sided long. The left-sided long has more perceived risk as compared to the right-sided long, which offers a confirmation. Which one? It's not a binary question. It's a question of what functionally serves the situation, not the nonsense that we see as right or wrong. In shifting our focus away from absolute answers, a relaxation occurs that deepens our experience of markets and creates the space for appropriate action to press itself forward. The appropriate action might be to get short. When we make the effort to honestly look at where our motivations are coming from, to see if they are self-serving or if they are serving the situation, we are presented with a choice. Our job as traders is to see this.
In simply being alert and seeing what we're up to while we're trading, we begin to free ourselves of the constraints of binary thinking, we become consciously responsible to ourselves. This is our practice. It is not a doing practice. It is a practice in seeing and relaxing and in creating the space for appropriate action. This is how we begin to reclaim our power as traders and trade with agency.
—Shane Blankenship
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