When I'm winning, I feel great and like I got this shiz down. When the drawdowns start, which my rational mind knows it's a part of the game, I can start feeling like a failure again. All the negatives that people I know have told me start coming back. Thoughts of 'what if I don't make it' start to creep in. It always ends ok but these irrational thoughts always come. I guess this is part of what I'm getting paid for right? Can other relate? Maybe one day I will mature/grow out of this endless cycle of ups and downs?
Unfortunately, no. You can't mature and grow out of this. What you CAN do though, is discredit the lies that others have planted in your head about this being impossible. I suggest researching the characteristics of successful traders vs. the characteristics of failures and seeing which one you more closely resemble. Then, when you have a drawdown you will already know that you have an overwhelming majority of the attributes common to successful traders. I also suggest challenging the reasoning for these negatives. People have told me before that if I trade, "I might lose money and my friends might look down on me." And it scared me. Then one day I thought. "Lose money? Have my friends look down on me??? Really? Is that the worst that could happen? What is that compared to my freedom?" What a chump I was for thinking just because their reasons were stated in a tone of importance that they really were a big deal. Neither one of those things is a big deal. Second, and what I did that really made a difference, is you can just "draw a line in the sand" and say in your heart, "Trading is what I'm doing with my life and there is no alternative. No plan B. No safety net. I will make this work and so the statistics about my likelihood of success are now irrelevant. This is what I'm doing" It's like a guy in a concentration camp trying to escape. His chances are slim, his friends try to talk him out of it, but in the end staying locked up is not an option. There is no alternative route, so 100% of his energy can go into planning and preparing for 100% success or to be shot. If trading is what you're going to do with your life, then the odds don't matter AND NEITHER DO THE CONSEQUENCES. You'll find a way.
The fact that you claim " failure type" feeling IRRATIONAL thoughts, means that you are still unconciously resist them. I believe that peace comes when you accept the feelings as they come and not resist them. Do not jusdge them. They are rational enuf. I am not saying i have perfected this, but what helps me is whne i practice "power of NOw". As described in the book, trying to stop thinking in itself is a thought that is engaging the mind. To master your mind, let the thoughts come in and try to listen to them as a thinker, observe them, but do not judge them. separate ur self from the mind. slowly you can see that these are merely thoughts of ur mind. and you can choose not to react with them. Hope this invokes ur though process...
I HAD the exact same feelings for years. I said it before and will repeat here...CONFIDENCE in your system will nearly eliminate these thoughts. The problem comes from not having FULL 100% confidence in your system. If you had that you would shrug it off and know your next profitable trade is only a few trades away at most. So how do you get this confidence? STATISTICS ON YOUR SYSTEM!!!! I am willing to bet you do not keep or look at your system statistics and have little information about win rate, expectancy, Payoff ratio, profit factor, and maximum drawdown that you can expect with your system. If you are profitable I suspect that you know an average profit per trade and approximate win rate but not much more than that. I had this EXACT same problem as you and I assume every other trader that is making a serious attempt at being profitable. It ALL disappeared when I looked at my stats and made some healthy decisions about risk and expected drawdown of my system. Unless you have this information you are just trading based on faith and hope that you are not going to have a huge drawdown. But once you KNOW what kind of drawdown you can expect (except in a catastrophic event) then its like a ZEN moment and it all goes away. I sleep better now and do not get that "pit in my stomach" feeling when I lose a trade or have a string of losses because I have MUCH MORE confidence in my system that ultimately I will win. If you do keep these stats and still get these feelings then I suspect you do not follow your system rules exactly and when you lose you know its because you didnt follow the rules. Simple solution is,....follow the rules. I hope this helps. N54_Fan
No sorry, when I'm up I feel great, but when I'm down I don't feel bad at all. And by the way always remember that you are a person not a machine, your system should have perfectly defined rules, you are just gaining experience when you lose that will help you in the long run.
I feel ok, when i am in open profits. I only feel good,when the trade is done and i made at least my minimum expected win. I fell bad when i am in open loss. I fell horrible when i made a loss. There is nothing wrong with that. It keeps you pushing on to make the winnings things more than the other bullshit.
When we recognize the reactions we are having to people it is a great opportunity to achieve peace and a tranquil psychological inner landscape. Start identifying them, the thoughts that are reactions to what people have done and said. Recently I found that I was reacting to things that were said decades ago and to things that were said today with pretty muchly the same emotional force! I was reacting to a psychopath whose trail crosses mine at a Pool playing venue. Once I stopped having a reaction to the guy I could very easily decide whether to give up an hour of Pool here and there in order to avoid him and reduce his opportunity at ruining my life [it's not like he has a life or much to lose] or to try to take him on in an arena where the scales are tipped heavily in his favor.. so I play Pool when he's not there and I try to have some ways of controlling him... Reasoning with Psychopaths and all other unreasoning animals with agendas is not ever going to work, that is a reality that one should accept. I don't have the inner argument going on and I feel like a lot smarter and saner person.. I was reacting to things that were said to me decades ago, the rudeness, the overt hostility of it all, it would overwhelm me even though it was just memory... When I have those thoughts now they make me laugh.. but I address them in my mind. I show the person what success I've achieved in having a mind that functions well, in having relationships that are flourishing, etc.. and I compare how polite, prosperous, and organized I am to what a mess they were/are.. and I win the argument [it's nice being judge and jury ] I wake up unencumbered and ready to engage in the battles of the day every day now..