What does it mean to be inspired or the have inspiration? According to Merriam-Webster inspiration is: something that makes someone want to do something or that gives someone an idea about what to do or create: a force or influence that inspires someone: a person, place, experience, etc., that makes someone want to do or create something: a good idea. Some examples of an inspiring event might be a dazzling sunrise that causes you to catch your breath and triggers a gratitude for being alive and desire to do more; or witnessing the miracle of birth that inspires you to be better; or any other of the many instances where you are taken by the majesty and mystic of the moment. It also has to do with those times when you are quietly inspired by the what-matters-most in your life like family, love and service to community that creates an inner passionate excitement. Being inspired also is about using organization and planning skills to put in place and maintain your focus on the things that are most important in the trade. It’s connecting the what-matters-most in your life to the what-matters-most in the trade. One of the most critical items to becoming inspired and passionate enough to raise your bar and increase your motivation factor is to start out with a “compelling reason” to trade; in other words your purpose.

Your purpose for trading is a navigational compass for maintaining “true trade north.” This is ensuring that your trading is “principle centered.” One thing that many traders default to when they think about purpose is to tie the ship totally to the notion of “profit.” As strange as it may sound having money as your only reason for trading is like game playing to be the only reason for using your cell phone while disregarding the vital importance of connecting with the important people and events of your life. Don’t get me wrong, money is integrally connected to trading and it is the lifeblood of the markets; but it is not the only, nor the primary reason why you trade. You want what money can buy. Money is only a medium of exchange; you can’t eat, drink or live in it, which means that it is only a secondary (extrinsic) and not a primary (intrinsic) motivator. Its only value is derived by consensus and therefore it is subject to becoming worthless; as so many currencies have fallen prey in history. The compelling reason is what connects the critically important things in your life to the critically important things in the trade; for instance tying the passion of family and providing for their welfare to making sure that you are planning your trades, trading your plans, following all of your rules and keeping all of your commitments. These top the list of what-matters-most items while in the trade in order to get the results that you want. This is why it is a compelling reason; because when you get to that fork in the road of a trade when you want to give in to that urge to chase a trade, move a stop or exit a trade prematurely you can plug into the energy of your passion by accessing and activating your compelling reason in order to re-mind yourself that you are trading for your children’s education, your families vacation home or the future of your little towheaded grandchild and this is why you must follow your rules and keep your promises.

Trading has a number of definitions; for instance, “It is the transfer of money from the accounts of those who don’t know what they are doing into the accounts of those who do.” (Sam Seiden) “Trading is a journey in self-discovery.” And, “Successful trading is effective energy management.” When you create consistency in your planning, follow-through and execution you will develop “step-by-step” capacity for strength and endurance in the trade. This all begins with your purpose, your compelling reason that puts the energy of your passion in the service of your trading. Here is where the importance of your process can inspire you to go as far as you can with all that you’ve got…your personal greatness.

Feedback is essential to any knowledge based performance. You must have a way of knowing “how you are doing” with respect to the variables that make up the process … in the case of this conversation, trading. Now, there are some traders who would say, “All the feedback I need to know is if I am making money or not.” To this I would reply…then why not just go to Vegas and gamble, because if you are not measuring, tracking and documenting your trades you have virtually nothing with which to base your progress upon. And, if you are trading by chance, you my friend are gambling. Basing your trades solely upon profit & loss is an ineffective way to measure your “mastery” of the process.   If you don’t know what you did right or wrong, then you can’t duplicate or eradicate the behavior. Without this knowledge, you are trading upon chance.

Trading mastery involves a set of variables or items that lead to “skill building.” Skill building is critical to any performance based endeavor because that is the path to getting better. And, the essence of skill building hinges on being self-aware. If you are self-aware then what you do, how you do it, the frequency with which you do it and the order become variables that you are not only able to track, measure and document, but you will be able to manipulate as well.

Firstly, skill building involves a set of trading protocols. A protocol is a sequential order of steps toward an aim or goal. And, protocols can be found across the board having to do with anything that involves performance; like medicine, law, accounting and sports, to name a few. These trading protocols are made up of strategies, procedures, set-ups and rules. They are talked about, reviewed and evaluated in special classes, for instance Online Trading Academy’s Extended Learning Track where rule based trading is emphasized through strategies and set-ups.

Secondly, protocols must be supported by effective routines. This is where you take the sequentially ordered protocol and develop a routine where you are doing the same thing “over and over.” This approach not only instills the behavior into a set of responses that support the overall goal, but it also trains your system to continue to follow-through when things get difficult. Training is about learning and doing. You’ve heard of the adage “practice makes perfect” well actually practice makes “permanent” in your body/mind system. All world class achievers have trained for years to accomplish their goals.

Thirdly, it is imperative to create a feedback loop in order to verify and document whether or not the protocols are performing adequately. Through measuring, tracking and documenting you will identify not only what needs to be modified or changed with the protocol or strategies and set-ups (the mechanical data); you will also identify what needs to be modified in your thinking and emotions, (the internal data). Of course, feedback can be principally a “self-monitored” process; but, as well it is also extremely effective when you are given critiques from someone else. But, the point is that feedback in any form and from any aspect of your immediate environment should be welcomed and never taken personally. It is only additional information, which can be the lynch pin of your ability to master the process.

After you have used your feedback to judiciously manipulate your mechanical data and as well your internal data and you have instilled the routine deeply, then you have begun the process of habituating the entire sequence. Habits are powerful and you know from your own experience that good habits lead to desired results and bad habits lead to headaches. So in part the conversation is about instilling strong, goal oriented habits that will lead you to what you want…skill building. Also, when you have incorporated a skill into your mind/body system, and in other words you have mastered the process, you have gone from being totally unaware (unconscious incompetence) to working on what you have identified (conscious incompetence) to establishing a routine (conscious competence) to habituating the thinking, feeling and doing (unconscious competence). The beauty of being unconsciously competent is that the behavior becomes the default mechanism (an option that is selected automatically unless an alternative is specified) for following through on what matters most in your trades. Remember when you were learning to drive. It was very scary and difficult. You went from being unconsciously incompetent (you didn’t know what you didn’t know), at 4 or 5 years old; to consciously incompetent (you knew there was a process called driving and at 10 or 11 you were painfully aware that you didn’t know how); to consciously competent (at 15 you were learning and you had to think about every small detail as you drove); to unconsciously competent ( at 30 your skill level had dropped into your subconscious behavior where you could eat a burger, talk on the phone, and drink a cup of coffee simultaneously while driving – of course not recommended).

So, skill building is the path to attaining, maintaining and sustaining your A-Game. And, you cannot skill build without a feedback process that is aimed to identify what works and what doesn’t, which of course is related to both the mechanical data (all the market, news and indicator driven data) and your internal data (your thoughts, emotions and behavior). You must track, measure and document all significant data (any data that materially affects your trade. If you do this religiously, and use the information to modify your protocols and routines you will habituate this process and you will skill build. Trading in the trenches requires the best that you have to bring to your trading platform. Thousands of traders out there are willing to do what it takes to master the process. You must ask yourself, are you willing to do what it takes?

The other day while looking at a sports show on TV I watched an interview with Holly Holm. If you are a sports fan, and those of you who aren’t please forgive the reference, you may remember that Ronda Rouse, former women’s undefeated bantam weight mixed martial arts champion who had obliterated “all” of her previous opponents by knocking them out in the first few seconds of the first round, was thoroughly trounced by Holly in a knockout. Now, even if you don’t like fighting or even sports for that matter, you can appreciate that when an undefeated champion with myriad first round knockouts enters the ring with a new challenger, all of the attention and the bets go to the champion. Well, as you might be saying right now…”all this is good but get to the point!” OK, here is the point. In the interview Holly was very gracious to her opponent and insisted that a rematch was and should be on the horizon. She also discussed her preparation for her upcoming fight and assured all listening that she was getting “ready” and making sure that she was in “top-notch”- shape, intention and ability – to focus on what-matters-most, maintain clarity of purpose and be comfortable with discomfort. Sound familiar? Isn’t this in principle what you must do and how you must prepare to get the trading results you want?

Becoming comfortable with discomfort may seem a no brainer; but you must put yourself on the line every time you pull up your platform, just as the fighter must put herself on the line every time she steps into the octagon. Essentially, when you put your hard-earned capital at risk, you are very much like Holly and Rhonda; that is, you are going into the trader trenches to face an adversary on the other side of the trade who is trying to beat you and take your cash.   You must enter into a physiological and psychological position of power and personal control. But, this is scary, is it not? This is uncomfortable.

The prospect of going into that trading octagon feels just as chaotic, personally affronting and daunting as putting your dukes up to go at it physically. In other words, it is very uncomfortable but despite this discomfort you must maintain your composure in order to walk away from the trade moments later with a win and the knowledge that you went as far as you could, with all that you had. If you performed at your peak, you braved the urge to do something that was not in your best interests, you braved going against your need to be right, and as you felt most vulnerable to breaking a personal promise you took a deep breath and questioned your underlying motives (limiting & irrational beliefs) thereby positioning yourself to get more data by letting the trade play out. This means that you didn’t second guess the plan and therefore you were positioned to learn more of what the trade could “teach” you. You were able to be “curious” enough about what would happen in order to later in another trade under similar circumstances use this knowledge to proactively and preemptively adjust your responses so as to eliminate bad behavior.

These data are the process coin of the trade. You’ve got to get and adroitly use the data…and it’s all about the data! You can’t excel at anything important without the information –the data- of what it takes to perform well. For instance, with trading you must learn about the mechanics of the markets (charting, drawing levels, indicators, news, economic reports, and platform idiosyncrasies, to name a few). These data are critical to your success. By the same token, you must gather data about your internal self; the images in your head and the limiting and irrational beliefs that create emotions which drive what and how you take action…or not! These data invariably must be tracked, measured, verified and documented in order to identify what does not work, and what does. The documentation is like a fulcrum with a lever. I believe it was Archimedes who said, “…give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.” So, your documentation allows you to identify those issues, set-backs, urges and problem behaviors that are severely compromising your ability to resonate with reality and maintain a laser focus on what-matters-most in the trade. But, you can’t do this if you become so distracted by discomfort from the internal or mechanical noise that you to do something against your A-Game.

Being and tolerating those uncomfortable moments that disrupt your equilibrium and cause you to chase trades, move stops and exit trades prematurely are paramount to becoming a consistently successful trader. Without the ability to tolerate and be comfortable with discomfort you will continue to reach for temporary relief (those rule violations mentioned above) which equates to doing things that jeopardize the results that you want.

Jack stared in disbelief at the “farce” that had formed on his chart. The fact that the price action had kept going up and had triggered his stop, taking him out of the trade had completely thrown him for a loop. It was on the NQ E-mini and the long term, intermediate and intraday trends were all down. He had placed a limit order at the lower line of the 60 minute supply zone that he had uncovered, and his stop was placed 2 points above the upper line of the zone. After realizing that he had just lost, he heard himself wonder out loud, “…How did this happen?” “If only I hadn’t been distracted by the T.V., I could have seen that coming.” “This always happens to me!” Jack was searching desperately for someone or something to blame. He was in a “reactive” orientation, i.e., the world is happening to me.

George, in another part of the planet and also playing the NQ E-mini observed the same long term, intermediate and intraday downward trends. His style of trading matched Jack’s and he saw the supply zone which had formed and the price action that was retracing to that zone. George placed his stop 3 points above the upper line of the 60 minute zone, and got filled with a market order just as the price action pierced the lower line of the supply zone. He asked himself what he needed to do, if anything, to protect his trade, which is the way he consistently approached his trades. He too was stopped out and again asked if there was anything he could have done to better execute this trade.   George also had the thought: “It’s all up to me, I can’t rely on anyone else.” He was in a “creative” orientation, i.e., I create my future.

Mildred took a deep breath and checked her emotional temperature before pulling the trigger on her trade. She determined that she was relaxed and poised to resonate with the reality of the charts and allow the market to prove her analysis wrong. She too had been looking at the NQ E-mini and like Jack and George, realized that the long term, intermediate and intraday trends were down, and that a supply zone had formed on the 60 minute chart. She placed a bracket order which automatically placed her stop 5 ticks above the upper line of the zone as it executed her sell limit order, which was placed 2 ticks above the supply zone’s lower line. Since the price action surged upward it had inevitably triggered her stop as well. Mildred immediately accepted the outcome and affirmed to move on to the next trade as soon as she placed a journal entry to ensure that she documented the trade. She knew that the market could and would do anything, and she was single-minded about being at one with it and only trading what she saw.   Mildred was in an “interdependent orientation”, i.e., she saw herself as part of a greater whole with which she fostered a kinship between her internal awareness and her external reality.

If you look closely at these three orientations it is apparent that the “reaction orientation” does not serve your A-Game. It is focused on all of the forces outside of you that can negatively impact upon you. You are consistently looking for that event that can throw you off and about which to form an excuse or place the blame if you don’t get the results that you wanted. You are primarily defensive in your stance, always looking to determine what is going on with the markets and in life. You “…don’t want to be tricked again.” The emotions associated with this orientation are anxiety, trepidation, dread and anger at thoughts of being trifled with by the markets and other people. This type of orientation is often born out of life’s losses, disease, and trauma. Additionally, this orientation has a doom and gloom point of reference that is unsupportive to being pro-active.

The “creative orientation” actually has elements of a positive direction. This person moves through life asking: “What do I want to create?” Instead of blaming the world, you ask how you caused your circumstances to happen, and what you need to do to change them. You learn well and quickly from experience. You have a leadership focus. And yet, something is missing about the creative orientation. It sets you apart from the community. You see yourself as a loner and it becomes about “me.” Some of the emotions associated with this orientation are guilt, stress, impatience, frustration and greed. Fragmentation can be used to describe this fundamental assumption that you are separate from the world, and it is a fundamentally unfulfilling way of thinking. This may be why, despite its worthwhile qualities, the creative orientation often leads to inner conflict and extreme self-centered behavior, which, even in the face of being supportive to your general trading, can undermine your other relationships. And, if your other important relationships are not positive this condition will eventually affect your trades.

The “interdependent orientation” provides a personal and visceral sense that you are a part of a greater whole. You value internal awareness and as well external reality. You are much more apt to “accept” the things you cannot change just as you are to have the “courage” to change the things you can. Although you recognize your integrity as a separate person, you also feel “a part of” the community. The interdependent orientation realizes that you can’t command the larger system (the markets) any more that one cell can command a body. This doesn’t mean that you cannot use the positive creative elements of your internal resources to get better results. In this point let’s be clear, you want to be pro-active in using all that you have to go as far as you can. The aim is to do your best while remaining accountable in all your actions and recognizing that you are a part of a greater whole and that what you do is important. As part of a community you seek to use the “community”, i.e., Mastermind, trading buddies, etc., to get and give nurturing support which immensely serves your growth as a trader. With this orientation you are better able to resonate with reality and be at one with the markets and as well your general environment.

Identify your orientation by becoming more aware of your internal issues and resources. Ask yourself: What am I telling myself as I prepare to trade? What are my assumptions about my trading process? What are the connections in my life that impact upon my trading? To what communities do I belong? These are just a few of the questions that will increase your orientation awareness. This is part and parcel of building your A-Game and mastering your mental game.

Having and being a part of a learning community or mastermind group can be a real power house to your trading. A community is positive and powerful in many ways. It fosters a common sense of direction, objectives and aims; and, it can be very helpful in supporting personal responsibility and accountability.   Community can also assist its members in forging a greater commitment to trade planning and following through with rules due to the team spirit and emotional bonding that takes place. One way that this can happen is the personal connections that are encouraged because they evoke a richer, more involved sense of “selves.”

Community comes from the Indo-European word mei meaning “change or exchange” and ostensibly was joined with another root kom meaning “with” to form kommein meaning “shared by all.” The ideas of “change and exchange” and “shared by all” are powerful precursors to personal and collective learning and development that are so important and necessary to the evolution of peak performance trading. It creates cooperation and reliable interdependence which at its core are building blocks of the type of synergy (the sum of the parts are greater than the whole) that can propel the growth of the community members. There is a common purpose that stems from articulated values of the trading process; and this leads to greater positive results. Additionally, it becomes a practice field for skill building, which is another core principle to any endeavor that is performance oriented. The community also holds opportunities for specific and valuable contributions from its members that further cement its value and again produces increased performance. When this happens, it also provides sustainability to the endeavor and elevates a shared vision of success for all based upon traders living up to their personal and collective commitments.

There are several core processes that can support a learning community or mastermind group; i.e., Capability, Commitment, Contribution, Continuity, and Collaboration.

Capability: A focus on members’ skills so that those strong in one area can complement those who aren’t and vice versa. The group also must encourage learning and improvement among its members as a “collective” undertaking. Everyone’s improvement is everybody’s business. They must care about one another and care about being the best that they can be. They must have or develop the capacity for dialogue; i.e., open and honest feedback and sharing of ideas.

Commitment: Commitment to the team builds when people are an active part of the experience of creating something they value together. Looking at common problems through the prism of positive feedback and support will not only empower the group it will also act as an emotional camaraderie to help bond the group further.

Contribution: It is imperative that all members be willing to contribute; i.e., time, effort, leadership, skills, intellectual and emotional honesty, and enthusiasm.

Continuity: Learning communities can’t survive without some measure of continuity. Memorializing through documentation and stories can help with this. In other words, the masterminds institutional memory must be both written and carried person-to-person. Mastermind is important business and as new members come into the fold they need to be helped to understand their responsibilities, and the practices of the learning community. In this way both continuity and sustainability can be addressed. If one person (perhaps a leader) moves on the others retain the history, vision, and values of the community. When a new leader emerges the community doesn’t have to start over.

Collaboration: Developing reliable interdependence is the essence of effective collaboration. “All for one and one for all” may sound storybook but this is the kind of attitude that will foster collaboration that is meaningful, purposeful, relevant and substantive. Effective collaboration means that there is a sense of interpersonal reliability…you can count on me and I can count on you. It is achieved through common goals, genuine relationship, a shared vision and a belief in the common cause that formed the initial impetus for the community’s coming together.

Across the planet some of the most stunning achievements in all manner of endeavors have had at their core a mastermind group, a learning community. Team efforts work across the board, not just in sports. Trading is a 100% mental game and if you have a caring, strong, effective and committed support community behind you and you behind them, then you become more caring, strong, effective and committed. It’s about doing what it takes to develop your A-Game and then bringing that A-Game to your platform and keeping it there during all of your trading session. This is a way to do just that.