LINK what you DO NOT love to what you LOVE to POWERFULLY transform your trading and life!
When you go back and you review your trades and you look at what has happened and how it happened and what your response to what happened was; you look at what your relationship was with the trading and the trades that you took, it’s very powerful.
It’s very important, and that’s where you start picking up patterns of behavior that are supportive and not supportive in your trading.
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It is something that I am diligent about.
And it’s something that I talk about a lot in the Tribe of Traders, is reviewing and tweaking all the time.
But I also know that it’s not something that people like to do.
In this chapter I want to focus on FREEDOM, and what it means to you.
For me freedom is the freedom to do what I like, when I like it and how I like.
There’s so much to do in life.
So many places to go.
So many experiences to have and so much to do.
So much to achieve in life.
I’ve got a couple of businesses and I’ve got more I want to get into and being able to do that is freedom, isn’t it?
And what gives you that is financial freedom.
It’s a good opportunity to reflect and see what it is that I’m doing and what I’m not doing. To ensure that I’m taking my life towards that point – of FREEDOM, every single moment of every single day.
That’s why, the Tribe members in Tribe of Traders, they know that I talk about making sure that you focus your day on high priority actions.
Because if you don’t your day and life will be filled with low priority shite, essentially.
And before you know it, a year has gone by, what have you achieved?
Two years, five years, 10 years have gone by, what have you achieved?
So unless you’re consciously filling your day with high priority actions, your life gets filled with low priority garbage that occupies so much time and space in your mind that it’s not taking you forward.
That’s why with trading it’s very important to manage your time.
Because whatever you’re doing in your trading is mirroring your life, that’s why the instantaneous feedback of trading is brilliant because it gives you massive clues as to what’s going on in your life.
I had an epiphany recently, whilst at gym with my trainer.
I love him to bits, his name is Luca. He’s an awesome guy, and I try and go to the gym every day.
I hate going to the gym, I hate it, oh my God I hate it.
Not because I don’t like being fit.
Not because I don’t like the endorphins and all that, I absolutely love that.
In fact, my background is I was a sporting fanatic.
I was fanatical about sport, and by default, fitness.
But it wasn’t for being fit, it was for the excitement of sport.
And I was extremely competitive.
So I would compete at water skiing, paragliding, motorbike racing, swimming, scuba diving, running even; you name it, I would compete.
And with some sports I competed National level and some at International level.
So all my sport was about competitive, and what I realised the other day at gym, it fitness was not important to me, it was the competitive side of it or the excitement or the activity that was important to me.
Not from the perspective of fitness or staying trim and that sort of stuff.
And I am an all or nothing person.
So I get my teeth into something and I dig into it and I focus on it and I go hell for leather after it.
To the point of exclusion of other things, and it’s not necessarily an ideal trait because I tend to battle with balance.
Then more recently I got into some work projects that excite me way more than the sporting things that I used to do.
They excite me so much more, my various business projects are my new sport.
So what happened was, I didn’t continue exercising.
I wasn’t continuing to stay fit, so I’ve got more and more unfit over the past few years.
I’m being really honest with you here, but it was an epiphany and I need to share this story with you in order for me to explain what I mean by link what you do not love to what you love. to powerfully transform your trading and life.
So just bear with me with the story, okay, because it will make sense.
So obviously with my whole life now being round business and focus on the projects I was engaged that were really exciting.
And being the all or nothing type person I throw myself into it and immerse myself totally into it.
Obviously the whole fitness side of things got pushed to the side. And I didn’t continue with exercise because the only ever time I ever went to gym, historically, was in order to support my sport.
I was a national swimmer. If competitions were coming up, I would be in the gym training six hours a day.
If it was water skiing season, the same, I’d spend hours training in the gym.
So gym to me was a way to prepare myself for competition or my sport, to get to the top of my sport. So when I discovered the same level of excitement in my work, I didn’t continue it with gym.
Obviously, as you get older, you realise, hold on a second, that’s not going to work, I can’t not stay fit.
I can’t not have a level of fitness, because your body atrophies and it’s not healthy, it’s not wise, and so on.
And also, in order to be productive in what you do, you need the endorphins.
You need the good hormones that flow through your body through exercise in order to relieve stress.
To elevate your inspiration and your energy levels, so I now to go gym, and I try and go to gym every day.
I fricking hate it, because to me I see it as getting in the way of my work.
Because it’s an hour and 45 minutes out of my day and my day starts real early and it finishes real late.
For my work; an hour and 45 minutes out of my day, I begrudge it, I really begrudge it.
Until yesterday, I had an incredible epiphany.
I thought, I should look at it differently. My work is my sport now, and I need exercise to support my sport.
My sport now happens to be my work.
I need exercise to support that. I can’t be as efficient in my work if I’m not inspired.
If I do not get the endorphins going through my body, if I do not get the stress released out of my body. If I do not stay fit to have a higher level of energy.
Because, trust me, with the couple of businesses I’ve got going I need a lot of energy.
So, in actual fact, I’ve actually been trying to separate the inseparable.
Going to gym is as important to my work and to my business, as it was to me training at World Championships scuba diving, or swimming, National Championships swimming, or competing in water skiing or whatever it is. It is as important.
That was the epiphany. There I was doing something that I don’t like. I don’t love, I felt begrudged about it. And yet it’s the thing that’s going to support what I do love.
Does that make sense?
I am sure you can agree that I would be a lot better in my work when I’m stress free.
When I’m inspired, when I’ve got more energy, and it gives me a break from my day because my days are very long.
So you know what, it’s a very important part of life. Apart from health, just in terms of how it impacts your work, for me, how it impacts my work.
The epiphany was specifically around trading and traders. So many traders will not reviews their trades.
Will not do their trade plan.
Will not trade according to their trade plan.
They hate it, they just want to focus on the act of trading.
Or another example, and this is so important, so many traders will not focus on the mindset side of wealth building.
They want to avoid it and just want to focus on trading; you can’t do that, it’s not possible, it’s not possible.
So if you don’t love doing the mindset work.
If you don’t love doing the trade plan work.
If you don’t love getting trade ready in order to trade.
Whatever it is that you don’t love that is important to your work or trading….
So let’s say, for example, you hate doing trade plans or trading according to rules, but you really love what trading can do for your life or what it can do in support of your vision, but can you see how important it would be if you had them co-joined?
So what I want you to do is start linking how – what you don’t love – is going to support what you love.
By not loving the parts you are avoiding… what you’re trying to do there is separate the inseparable.
They can’t be separate, they’re all one.
The same as me going exercising every single day is part of the whole.
Me going to gym is part of supporting my business.
Gym is important, so it’s directly impacting the quality of my work.
Where is it for you? Where in your life do you find that you really love something but there’s something that you don’t love, but you know that it supports and it’s required to support what you love?
And what you need to do then is start linking what you don’t love to what you love when it comes to how it will support what you love.
Does that make sense?
And how are you going to link it? That’s the next thing, how do you make that link?
Obviously you can have an epiphany like I had, that’s the one way.
Now I will see my gym-ing differently going forward.
But I will show you another exercise which is one I’m going to suggest to you as well.
Take a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and I don’t type this out.
Write this out, and the reason why I say I don’t type it is there’s something much more powerful in writing than typing. You lose something with the typing. Typing has an impact but pen, pencil and paper, is the best.
And put two columns; on the one side put the thing you don’t love, so, for example, for me would be gym-ing.
And on the other side of the column put what you love, for me it would be Tribe of Traders, for example.
Then I’ll write down 50, ways in which what I don’t love (going to gym) supports what you do love (Tribe of Traders). The act of linking these together is powerful – and neurologically has a significant impact as well.
I want you to do that. It’s not an easy exercise at all.
But unless you have the actual epiphany that I had yesterday, and even with that I’m going to write down 50 ways in which me going to gym every single day with Luca, even though, no offence, I love Luca tons, he’s amazing. And I will link how that supports my Tribe of Traders project. So 50 different ways.
So, for example, I’ll make a start;
I get to release stress.
I get to have that walk back from the gym every day which I love . The walk back for me from the gym to my office every day. Where I walk along the river, hear the seagulls and I’m checking out Tower Bridge every morning, that is very special. It gets me inspired, gets me into a state of inspiration when I get back, I feel alive.
It gives me an opportunity to remove myself from being in the business to working on the business.
Remove myself and start seeing things from a different perspective, allowing myself some head space to look at challenges or blocks I might have.
There’s just so many ways in which … I could list out 50 ways in which going to gym directly impacts to the benefit my business, my work, my projects.
Does that make sense?
None of those 50 will be, I will be fitter, I will lose weight, I will be healthier..
That is a given, we all know that, but I will focus specifically on how going to gym is benefiting and powerfully taking me forward in my business of the Tribe of Traders.
So will you do that work?
Because everybody I know has something they don’t do in their trading that they would be wise to do because they don’t love it.
I’ve done some work with institutional traders, Hedge fund traders as well in the States, and they don’t do some of the mind work that’s necessary.
So I had to work with them in understanding the power of mindset work for their trading.
This issue is not just limited to retail traders.
What is it for you that you don’t love that you know in your heart will support, if you were to love it, what you do love?
Identify that, write it down.
Write what you don’t love on the left side of the column and what you do love on the right side of the column and then write down 50 ways in which doing what you don’t love supports what you do love.
The reason why I’m asking you to write it down with a pen/pencil and paper is that what that does is you’re needing to use both sides of your brain. You’re not just being academic about it. By the physical act of writing it out you’re not being academic about it.
You’re pulling from both sides of your brain.
The act of writing it down, it’s like you’re acknowledging it.
You’re accepting it, you’re declaring it.
In a more devious way this technique was used quite a lot during the Second World War in prisoner of war camps.
The Nazi prisoner of war camps where they would get prisoners to write down stuff to support their captors.
To denounce their country and support Nazis.
There’s a whole load of research and documented evidence that that sort of behaviour took place.
Coming from the premise that when you write it down, you are declaring it as so, so it is very powerful.
