So, what can you do about the fear that keeps you from following your trading plan and maintaining your commitments? How to overcome fear that keeps you from following your trading plan. Well, let’s begin with what causes fear.  Fear stems from a perceived threat that may or may not be real. Threat begins as a perception and a thought.  In other words, when we have interpreted that an event is threatening our physical, mental, emotional, social or spiritual well-being we have given that event a meaning.  Now, meaning is a crucial process that controls not only what you perceive but how you perceive it. For example, that price action is moving toward my stop and that means that I’m going to lose in this trade (the movement of the price action may or may not take you out and at this point it is only an opinion but it is often treated as a fact).  In other words, the meaning here would be activated by a limiting or irrational belief about the inevitability of losing, and this in turn would prompt another limiting belief about what that says about you; i.e., “I’m a very poor trader and a loser because my stop loss was hit.”  It often continues to spiral downward from there.  So, what you are thinking is the genesis of the emotion that you experience…the fear.

Secondly, fear determines what you choose to do.  This is where you become immobilized or act in erratic illogical ways that increase your risk and destroy your desired results.  At this point it is important that you identify the thinking/beliefs that are fuelling the fear.  Here is an important question to ask; “What must I be telling myself or believing to feel this fear.”  This introspective inquiry will help you ferret out the underlying fear based programming that created that belief and in-turn developed the fear response in the first place. (more…)