I think in terms I take advantage of those who are without discipline as most of my signals are based on retail emotionally trading. Machines don't make often mistakes, they do as they are programmed. I know stats well of all my signals, I know more than most of those I compete against and yet I often think I compete against myself. What happens outside the doors of my office which is anywhere my laptops are, I have little control as when you factor in other people, you have little control, but how I work risk is disciplined. We all have different ways to trade as we do, but if you keep in mind that this is a business first and not a hobby, you have a better opportunity to do well.
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Discipline
- Thread starter ETcallhome
- Start date
I think the result of discipline can be a two edged sword. The main benefit is to free some aspects of life from decision, thereby leaving more mental space for contemplation. However, like anything taken to an extreme, it can become just another way to relegate everything to discipline just to free yourself from having to make a decision.
But somewhere in between, just something simple like no meat on Friday can provide some stability to a person who has no discipline imposed on him anymore by job and family.
But somewhere in between, just something simple like no meat on Friday can provide some stability to a person who has no discipline imposed on him anymore by job and family.
Yeah thanks for replying again. Like I said it has been a while since I started the thread and was questioning introducing self imposed discipline. After writing about it again it looks to me like the one thing I hope for as a result of discipline is nothing more than stability.Greetings Again ETCH,
You Said: I'm interested in introducing the severe discipline I impose on my trading into more mundane day to day habits.
Response: Oh it would indeed be very interesting if this could really be done. For sure, it would definitely not be a very pretty picture, but it would be very interesting indeed to witness…and not to personally experience again. My friend, it’s one thing to impose a “strict discipline” in a tiny little micro environment like trading wherein you are largely in the direct control of most of the variables in play, at least to a high degree. In other words, you control how you identify your trading patterns, how you define your edge, how you define your risk, and how you execute your trade. It’s pretty straight forward and a tough but highly doable thing. It’s quite another thing to attempt to impose a severe discipline in fast changing living kind of world and environment, one where you are oftimes “just an unwitting passenger on the ride of life”. It so often seems that unexpected and unplanned "shit and stuff" seems to just happen all the time.
For a little mundane example: Wifey wants to cuddle, and your kids want to play with Daddy right now on Sunday night. This is because she hasn’t had a “mundane hug” all this week, and the kiddies miss seeing you while you were sequestered all week in your trading room intensely staring at the screen. But you, being the strictly disciplined and highly successful trader that you are, you have firmly decided that you need to study right now in order to maintain your razor sharp edge and success in the market. And since you're doing all this for "them", you thereby continue to impose a strict businesslike discipline on yourself to study, and you easily coerce yourself back into your office for the rest of Sunday night. Adda Boy!
You have thereby successfully demonstrated that you are indeed a strictly disciplined trader who will always act in the best interest of his business, and his family. You have also demonstrated that you are also an insensitive, overbearing, jackass of a husband and Father, who may soon be spending a considerable amount of time living and sleeping alone. All this because you haven't as yet learned that life just ain’t like trading,…is it?
You may need to conduct a Q&R Session with yourself to ask yourself; "Why do I need a strict discipline in my more mundane day to day habits?" Are the bills not getting paid on time? Am I missing important dates and tasking? Or am I simply afraid that my mundane day to day attitude may once again migrate into my trading, and turn me away from my trading once again?
Whatever they may be, you need to confront your fears with your truth and with your honesty, and muster up the courage to then do what needs to be done. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set ye free.”
My friend, you need to realize that your life ain’t your trading, and your trading damn sure ain’t your life. You need to keep these two arenas in their proper places and in their proper perspectives in your life. It cost me relationships with two extremely good women and many, many, many, lonely years of ongoing frustration in both these arenas, just to learn this simple golden lesson. What is it going to cost you.....again?
You came here for some advise, and now you’ve got some….“what ya gonna do wit it?”
Hope this helps.
KDASFTG
After I blew up, I worked nine years in my own business no vacation only the 7 mkt holidays off. Talk about stability! I had stability coming out of my....
Hard to believe anybody would want any of that. And with stability comes responsibility.
But I was very free when I was young yet very disciplined, and those are the days I want to revisit. But the discipline back then just kept me out of trouble and it was so severe most of the time you weren't really allowed to do anything. So that left a lot of time to just sit quietly.
The paradox for me is something like music which has it's own discipline which I love, but nobody myself included can ever impose any kind of external discipline in that private part of my life because I love the music and have seen and heard the destruction misplaced discipline can wreak. For instance, I can practice the same scale over and over days or weeks or a lifetime, but nobody even myself can make me play it. So maybe discipline sets up a safe house for what I love in that as long as eveything else mundane is disciplined I can protect what I love from it's severity?
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Judge not that you be not judged, and if you go that route then you have to judge what in your life is mundane and should be disciplined and what in your life is free and should never be disciplined. It gets complicated.Yeah thanks for replying again. Like I said it has been a while since I started the thread and was questioning introducing self imposed discipline. After writing about it again it looks to me like the one thing I hope for as a result of discipline is nothing more than stability.
After I blew up, I worked nine years in my own business no vacation only the 7 mkt holidays off. Talk about stability! I had stability coming out of my....
Hard to believe anybody would want any of that. And with stability comes responsibility.
But I was very free when I was young yet very disciplined, and those are the days I want to revisit. But the discipline back then just kept me out of trouble and it was so severe most of the time you weren't really allowed to do anything. So that left a lot of time to just sit quietly.
The paradox for me is something like music which has it's own discipline which I love, but nobody myself included can ever impose any kind of external discipline in that private part of my life because I love the music and have seen and heard the destruction misplaced discipline can wreak. For instance, I can practice the same scale over and over days or weeks or a lifetime, but nobody even myself can make me play it. So maybe discipline sets up a safe house for what I love in that as long as eveything else mundane is disciplined I can protect what I love from it's severity?
It's a good thread, ET. I'm tired and I know I have something to add, but not now. Two days getting ready to go on the road again. The grass was calling, it had to be mowed. The food had to be cooked, cause fast food sucks. And meanwhile the currencies are moving all over, with earthquakes and full moons coming.
Discipline embodies two concepts; responsibility and focus.
Discipline is not complicated. But it does take effort and energy to execute.
Discipline is being responsible to do WHAT you are supposed to do, HOW you are supposed to do it, and WHEN you are supposed to do it and pay ATTENTION to detail.
Now apply that to trading or any other endeavour in life. You can even be disciplined to not be disciplined!
Discipline is not complicated. But it does take effort and energy to execute.
Discipline is being responsible to do WHAT you are supposed to do, HOW you are supposed to do it, and WHEN you are supposed to do it and pay ATTENTION to detail.
Now apply that to trading or any other endeavour in life. You can even be disciplined to not be disciplined!
yeah, trading is no problem, I've been trading the same way for years and nobody or nothing can change that. But the rest of my life was totally free, no responsibility, no discipline. I set up an aquarium and out of respect for the fish started performing daily maintenence at the same times each day. This is growing season so the outdoor plants need some regular attention, even if it is just to go out and look at them. I started writing a grocery list and add to it anytime I remember something I need to get next time. That was the hardest because it is so easy to postpone getting up from the computer and going into the room where my desk is and adding one item to my used envelope that I keep my list on.Discipline embodies two concepts; responsibility and focus.
Discipline is not complicated. But it does take effort and energy to execute.
Discipline is being responsible to do WHAT you are supposed to do, HOW you are supposed to do it, and WHEN you are supposed to do it and pay ATTENTION to detail.
Now apply that to trading or any other endeavour in life. You can even be disciplined to not be disciplined!
All these things have started to give my life some structure to revolve around. As a musician I like to jam, but jamming is only so good for so long and then it needs some structure. The trick is not getting captured inside the structure.
You like music.
I have a question for you. Who's a better pianist, Mozart or Jerry Lee Lewis?
Have you ever heard of the band Tool? Not my cup of tea, but they have very unique time signatures. 6, 6 1/2. The syllables from line to line in their lyrics have been decidedly analyzed as a Fibonacci arrangement of numbers. I'm sure they didn't plan this, it just happened. They just played what they felt. And yet they have won three Grammys and have sold out arenas the world over.
You said: " The trick is not getting captured inside the structure". You have the answer.
Its Jerry Lee. He made the world dance.
I have a question for you. Who's a better pianist, Mozart or Jerry Lee Lewis?
Have you ever heard of the band Tool? Not my cup of tea, but they have very unique time signatures. 6, 6 1/2. The syllables from line to line in their lyrics have been decidedly analyzed as a Fibonacci arrangement of numbers. I'm sure they didn't plan this, it just happened. They just played what they felt. And yet they have won three Grammys and have sold out arenas the world over.
You said: " The trick is not getting captured inside the structure". You have the answer.
Its Jerry Lee. He made the world dance.
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I would say that discipline means different things to different people. It's almost a second hand thing, as it seems to embody other states of mind and practices. For this trader, discipline can mean waiting. It's really the one thing I can point to that separates how I look at the markets now vs before. And before was not a pleasant place to be, because I was always trying to make something out of nothing. My central question to myself is always"Is there a trend here and is one side being forced to do something." There are other questions which arise from that, such as time frame. So I've begun to see the concept of discipline as secondary to the market. Being in flow with the market is easier than discipline. So I guess I see it as something you need if you can't get in the flow. But I think that has a lot more to do with the world around us and how we are conditioned to think habitually in certain ways. The practice of mindfulness or meditation certainly helps.