Getting What You’ve Always Gotten

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Wednesday, 30 June 2010 16:20

By Adrienne Toghraie, Trader’s Coach

For traders, there is an entire course in “getting it right” to be gleaned from a shortlist of old sayings.

By now, just about everyone in the Western World knows this first one: When you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always gotten. The longer you live, the more you realize that there is tremendous wisdom in this adage. In fact, I have heard variations on this theme from many different cultures. So, it looks like most of us know that you will continue to see the same results when you keep doing the same thing.

However, especially for traders, there is also a great problem in putting this advice into action!

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

Just as our forefathers recognized the futility in trying to achieve different results by employing the same means, they also recognized the danger in attempting to bring about different results by making dramatic, sweeping changes. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater was their way of alerting us to the stupidity of throwing out the good with the bad by making changes for the sake of making changes.

What is gained by losing the best of what you have achieved and learned in order to bring about something new? The illogic of human nature has a way of coming into play just at the most inopportune times and this is one of those times. When things are not working out, when we are not getting the results we want, there is a great attraction to the idea of throwing out everything old and starting up new. In the New World, we have raised this behavior to an art form. We like to sweep away history and start fresh and new.

Unfortunately, there is a third old saying that applies here: if you don’t learn from history, you are condemned to repeat it. Could it be that the very people who came to our shores were the ones who were most attached to the notion that you can create positive change by a clean sweep, by erasing the past, and perhaps throwing out the baby with the bathwater in the process?

Finding the gems

So, if a trader wants to change his results without losing what is valuable, how should he proceed?

First, a trader who is not getting the results he wants must realize that erasing everything and starting again from scratch is not best use of his time. To do so would be to lose all the things that he is doing right.

Trading is like biochemistry. In a scientific experiment, when you want a specific result, you carefully follow a detailed protocol. The slightest change in that protocol can result in a failed experiment. Scientists working at the bench can re-do an experiment hundreds, even thousands of times to get the result they want before they find the exact steps that will get them there. But, they do NOT attempt to get that result by throwing out all of the steps that take them in the right direction. Instead, they keep tweaking the process a little at a time, keeping what works and abandoning what does not.

In the meantime, they keep careful notes of the steps they are taking along the way – of what worked, what did not, and what they have learned in the process. Knowing what result they want, these bench scientists, patiently and systematically, keep tweaking their way to success.

The experience of the bench scientist in producing successful results is a great lesson for traders. When you are getting more of what you have gotten and it is not what you want, try following this protocol:

Know what result it is that you want. Write it down. (Don’t assume that you know what it is you actually want to achieve. It is not a real goal until you write it down.)
Also, document the results you are currently getting.
Ask yourself, why are you not getting the results you want?
Figure out what you are doing right and build on it.
Figure out what you are doing wrong and let it go.
Keep careful notes of your progress and refer to them along the way.
Be systematic.
Exercise patience.
Keep tweaking your protocol until you achieve success.
And, finally, when you have achieved the result you want, continue to replicate your results by carefully following your success protocol.
Then, when you have begun to get the results you want, you can follow the last adage about the golden rule: he who makes the gold, follows his own rules.

Adrienne Toghraie, Trader’s Coach
www.TradingOnTarget.com

Georgia Anderson` Financial News Network, trader, trader education, online forex, daytrader,forex currency, forex software, investors, forex trading, forex.

Disclaimer

There is substantial risk of loss in trading commodity futures, options and off-exchange foreign currency products. Each investor must consider whether this is a suitable investment.

Trades or trade recommendations made on this site have not been made by Georgia Anderson.

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