Today I want to talk about discipline, consistency and patience. These three things are very important in trading, and a lot of people struggle to actually apply them.
The thing I keep coming back to is that good traders are usually good individuals in general. So the work starts on an individual basis, away from the charts.
Key takeaways
Practice discipline in your day to day life, like going to the gym regularly, and it carries over into how you manage risk and follow your plan.
As Trading in the Zone puts it, believe you are the type of person who manages risk and works out, and the habit becomes much easier to keep.
Do not follow your plan once or twice; manage your risk and follow your plan every single day.
Patience is a muscle you develop in small everyday moments, like waiting at a red light instead of rushing across.
Measure a trade by the strategy and what went right or wrong, not by the amount you made; a losing trade you learn from is still a successful trade.
Results in trading are unpredictable, so take care of your risk and your plan and let the results come.
Discipline and consistency are habits
One way I build discipline is the gym. Going regularly strengthens the habit, and better health and well being mean I think more clearly and perform better when I trade.
To make a habit stick, tie your identity around it. If you want to manage your risk every day, become the type of person who manages risk and believe that is who you are.
Consistency works the same way. You do not want to follow your plan once or twice; you want to do it every day, and you practice that consistency in normal life first.
“When you see good traders, they are usually good individuals in general.”
Patience is a muscle you develop
Discipline, patience and consistency are all like muscles. They need to be developed, and you can develop them.
The way I practiced patience was with small opportunities. If I was crossing the street and the light was red, even when I was not in a rush, I would force myself to wait instead of rushing across.
Those small exercises build the characteristic you need at the chart. It is a tough skill, and patience is mentioned in the Quran and the Bible for a reason. It is not easy.
Stop trading for the paycheck
Trading is unlike a nine to five. In most jobs it is all about getting your paycheck, but in trading the measurement is a successful trade, not the amount you made.
A successful trade is about the strategy, the implementation, and what went right and wrong. Sometimes a bad trade is a successful trade if you learn from what went wrong.
Years ago, early on, I over leveraged an account and almost got margin called. A mentor walked me back through exactly where I crossed the line, and to this day I trade in a more calculated way because of it.
Change how you see patience
People think being patient means the reward comes later. That is not necessarily true.
Sometimes when you are patient, the result comes to you faster. You get rewarded for waiting.
The opposite is also true. Rush into a position, risk too much, breach your account, and now the result is farther away because you have to wait, deposit again and start another challenge.
Work on yourself, then put the skill to work with a reliable prop firm you can compare on Propvator.