. Not putting in stops. The ego doesn’t want to be proven wrong.
· Hesitating before putting on a trade. The ego wants reassurance before it begins.
· Overtrading. The ego wants to prove itself big time.
· Getting stuck in a trade. The ego has intertwined itself with a trade and is holding on for dear life. It cannot cut out. The ego doesn’t want to be wrong.
· Adding to a losing trade. The ego digs its hole deeper in a massive effort to crawl out.
· Grabbing a profit too soon. The ego wants a pat on the back.
How do we separate our ego from our trading? How do we keep from personalizing a trade? How do we avoid personalizing all of our trading?
One way to separate your ego from your trading is to build healthy boundaries between yourself and your trading. Not only do good fences make good neighbors, good boundaries make good traders.
A boundary sets limits, makes distinctions, informs you as to what is you and what is not you, makes clear the distinction between you and others, tells you where one thing ends and another begins. It distinguishes between past, present, and future. It lets you know that another’s ideas, values, and feelings are not necessarily yours. A boundary is flexible and permeable. It lets information flow back and forth. It allows you to listen actively without having to take on someone else’s opinions and without having to force your opinions on another person. In trading it draws a distinction between yourself and your trading, between one trade and another, between one trade and all of your trading.
One trader would see the signal to take a trade and before she could put the trade on, she’d hear a voice saying, “What if I’m wrong?” Immediately she’d feel small and diminished. The next step was simply to let the trade go by as she sat there stalled by her vulnerable ego. She needed a boundary between her self-esteem and the outcome of a trade. She needed a boundary between self worth and being wrong. With such a boundary she could give herself permission to not always have to be right. (more…)