“I want to make $1000 a day in my trading”

That’s the goal that many traders make and never achieve… Let’s look at it in more depth…

In my last post I mentioned that it was best to write goals in three levels to guarantee success. But trading goals have something very peculiar about them…

...They never work!!!

If you have ever written trading goals before, I am sure you concluded that writing goals is useless, but is it?

There are many reasons why your trading goals have not worked, but in this post I only want to address the main one – one that is neglected almost 100% of the time.

“DO” Goals Vs “BE” Goals

The main problem I’ve observed in the majority of my private clients and traders in general, is that they tend to write DO goals instead of BE goals.

If you wrote “I want to make $1000 a day in my trading”, you wrote a “DO” goal, and in trading DO goals don’t work! 

If you write “I want to earn X amount of ticks or pips per trade” more likely you will be create more stress around your trading. That’s what “DO” Goals in trading do, they create stress!

But have you thought about the marvelous advantages of  writing “BE” goals?

Imagine you discover that your main obstacle to success in your trading is lack of patience. If you were more patient you would avoid taking set ups that are not fully there and that invariably lead to losses.

In order to counteract this problem, you write a “BE” goal. Instead of “making” X amount of dollars or ticks, your goal is actually “Be Patient”. Naturally, you also write a counterstrategy for what to do in those moments when you may not be patient.

Such a strategic approach will surely help you BE more patient and consequently your results will not suffer from those useless losses you had as a result of being impatient.

It may just be that establishing yourself in that patient approach,  is exactly what allows you to wait for your ideal set up. And because of that you shall indeed end up making those $1000 a day you intended, but they will be the result of a BE goal NOT a DO goal.

Be good!