Have you made your New Years resolutions? The most popular resolutions are generally about weight loss, exercise or not smoking. Some people come to us with a resolution to change careers and start trading full-time for a living. Studies show that 25% of us give up on our resolutions within the first week. 33% of us break our promises to ourselves by the first month and more than 50% of us drop out by six months. Pretty alarming right? Well that is if you fall on the half empty side of things rather than the half full side. Should these statistics worry you? or even deter you from even trying?

At one time or another all of us have broken our promise to ourselves. Fortunately for us the brain is geared to forgive. If it wasn’t, you might find everybody crying 24-7 and that wouldn’t be much fun. As we are in the first month of the year I felt it was a good time to send a “gut check call” and keep you on track if you feel yourself slipping a bit already. Most begin to give up because the tendency from day to day is to focus or consume thoughts on the finish line before even getting started.

Let’s say for example you wanted to run a marathon (26.2 miles). The focus on day one is to finish but some start huffing and puffing after running one mile the first day of training and the inner chatter starts, “How am I supposed to run 26.2 when I cant even run one?” You can’t take on 26.2 on the first day. In the trading world many students come to me saying they want to make $1,000 a day and on their first day most struggle to even finish positive. Then the inner chatter starts, “Why did I even start this, losing money wasn’t in the brochure!”

So you might ask how you can keep yourself on track and not consume yourself with the end result. The answer is that you need to set yourself up with “positive distractions”. A “positive distraction” to me is doing what you know you need to do from day to day to reach your end goal but adding something fun to the daily task or something you can do along the way to save you time that works in tandem in helping you get where you want to go. Lets take the marathon runner first as an example as I personally had an experience of how a positive distraction helped me on a run the other day.

First I know running helps my endurance levels, improves my health and builds energy to concentrate at higher levels, all needed to fuel and help my trading. Also I am setting my plans to begin training for my second marathon and sometimes the hours it takes can be a grind. My time during the day is limited and to top it off I have a presentation coming up in a couple of weeks and I needed to write an article for our newsletter. This was a perfect positive distraction because I needed to think it out and talk it out and get a run in. Off I went on my run for the day which was 8 miles (2 uphill, 2 downhill and 4 locally around the streets of Hollywood). Now without a positive distraction the beginning 2 miles uphill and the remaining 6 would be a bear if that was my only focus. Wouldn’t you know that consuming my thoughts with my presentation and this article all while running, I soon realized that I was already turned around from the 2 mile uphill and all the way downhill (4 miles done) before my first thought of running hit the forefront of my brain. The hard part was over and I had my thoughts in place for my presentation and this article.

I found another positive distraction to help my transition and profitability from the loud pit noises to the quiet office when I left the trading floor at the end of 2004 to trade 100% on the computer. Since I only actively traded the 30 Year Bond Futures at the time, I thought I could transition very easily. What I didn’t realize was that watching my favorite market on the screen that wasn’t moving much was like watching paint dry. Sometimes I didn’t trade all day and the inner chatter started; if I don’t trade, I don’t make money and if I don’t make money, I cant pay my bills. A destructive thought pattern and a perfect recipe to start forcing trades. My positive distraction for computer trading needed to appear soon! What I soon realized is that I saw other markets moving and I needed to apply my strategy and prepare to trade other markets. I began to use my energy and positively distract myself to scan more markets and find the better set-up rather than force action on a market that wasn’t moving or set up the way I like. Creating game plans for other markets also helped me understand more about the global economy and continues to this day to be a strong foundation for my longevity in this business.

When you fill your mind with positive distractions, you won’t dwell on the finish line too soon and all of a sudden you realize you have already climbed the hill. You reach your goal and feel in the end it was pretty effortless.

Whatever you decide to try; you can’t win, if you don’t play!! Prosperity is at your fingertips! All you have to do is grab it!!

For more RDS articles on trading, visit www.rdstrader.com.