1. A belief that you create your results in life.
Most people don’t understand this concept. They repeat the same mistakes over and over again because they blame their mistakes on external factors. For example, if you blame your bankruptcy in one of my marble games on the person who pulled the 5R marble against you, you are not taking responsibility for your position sizing error of risking 20% (or more!) of your equity on a single trade. Consequently, you’ll repeat this mistake over and over again and there will always be someone to blame for pulling the 5R marble against you.
Conversely, top traders are constantly determining how they produced their results and working to correct their mistakes. They create their reality.
2. The interest and desire to really understand yourself.
You cannot understand how you create your own results if you don’t know yourself intimately. I believe that most people live their lives like the automatons in the movie, The Matrix. They just do their thing, not realizing how much they have been programmed by their culture, and their family and friends rather than understanding that they always have a choice in everything.
The great traders I know continually study and challenge themselves, their thinking, their actions, and their reactions.
3. Discipline to continually work to improve yourself.
Top traders often have a passion to work on themselves. A good trader will probably complete the Peak Performance Course once or twice and internalize many aspects of it. A top trader, or a potential top trader, will go through the course many times and develop a discipline that involves spending 1-4 hours each day working on improving himself or herself. (more…)