Learning to Say No and How it can Help Your Trading

People can spend a lot of time doing “things” that don’t contribute to their dreams / goals. And by simply doing the opposite, that is doing less of those “things” and more of what contributes to their dreams / goals, the faster success can be achieved in their various endeavours. This post is about learning to say NO to those various “things”. Saying NO takes a lot of discipline, over time it can become a habit, and can spill over into other areas of your life such as trading. And trading is what we are about. Let’s start.

We all know them, I’m just reminding you again. Here’s a list of those “things” to say NO to if we are serious about the dreams / goals we want to achieve.

Learn to say NO to:

• Procrastination / Laziness
• Unhealthy habits (like your eating habits for example)
• Negative people
• People that don’t believe in what you are doing
• Negative thoughts and negative self-talk
• Waiting for the perfect moment / perfection 
• Making excuses
• Social media (all day every day)
• Invites by friends to go out / pleasing other people
• Shortcuts

Most of the “things” that are holding us back from achieving our dreams / goals are in the above list in some way, shape, or form. And most of us have more than one. 

Benefits of saying NO:

There are many benefits that come from saying NO. Below are just a few:

• By saying No you prioritize what’s important to you, thereby creating more time for yourself in the process.
• Saying NO can help you become more confident and feel more in control / in charge.
• By doing more of what you know will get you closer to achieving your dreams / goals will make you more happy.
• You’ll become more disciplined.
• This might be hard, but by saying NO to friends / colleagues / family will reveal who really respects you and your dreams.

How do we start?

Start by picking just one and be disciplined enough to say NO whenever that situation arises that can throw your intentions off track. 

What helps is to plan ahead what you want / need to get done for any given day / week and just say NO to when your temptation comes up, or you are being tempted; do this until you’ve finished what you planned. On completion, you can always spend some time on those other “things”.

Always think about how what you presently want to do will affect your dreams / goals in the long term. Watch TV now vs exercising? Watching TV vs journaling trades, or reviewing trades? How will these choices affect your dreams / goals long term? The choice is yours.

Keep building the discipline of saying NO, make it a habit, and then move onto another. 

How can saying NO help you in your trading?

For me the biggest one is that it helps me build discipline, and we all know discipline is a crucial component of trading. 

Also, by saying NO to procrastination and laziness, we might actually start keeping detailed trading records, journaling and reviewing our trades for example. The same can be said about writing out your trading strategy and backtesting it first before committing real money instead of taking shortcuts.

Do negative people and those that don’t believe in you help your trading? I don’t want to advocate that you always say NO to going out, but at certain times it might be for the best, like when you need to review your trades, or do market preparation for example.

I’m not against social media at all. But being on it 24/7 is not healthy in my opinion. Also, the content you choose to engage in can have a positive or negative impact on you. But with regards to trading, there are many opinions and charts going around on social media. Please don’t let other people’s opinions and charts influence / affect your trades / trading. 

Won’t it be nice to be a happier and more confident trader? Also, saying NO will leave you with more time to spend on your development as a trader.

Finally:

Again, for me the most important part of saying NO is that I’m becoming more disciplined which is making me more happy because I’m getting done what I’m supposed to get done. I know that alone is making me a better person and better trader.

Thanks so much for reading this post, I really do appreciate it. Hope you are all well and safe.

Thanks and Regards,

Trading SOS SOS