Focus is funny! It’s meaning can be obvious or mysterious.
FOCUS – The Obvious
“Focus!” has obvious meaning when it’s the end of the day and you’re asking your 10-year-old to give 30 more minutes of focus to get homework done when everyone’s tired. Think misery, drudgery, suffering…
FOCUS – The Mysterious
It’s a mysterious kind of “focus” the time-traveler possesses, concentrating himself literally into oblivion, slipping from one time to another. It’s a supernatural kind of focus but we can all imagine it… even relate to it for some mysterious reason. Weird.
How does this relate to trading?
If I were to ask you to explain trading to me in a sentence, could you do it? Probably not! I can’t even do it, and I explain trading to people every day!
Success in trading comes from knowing what you’re looking for when you stare into your charts, and knowing what you want when you open a trade.
There are a hundred things waiting to steal your attention and destroy your focus. I have A LOT to say about “Focus Destroyers” but that’s a topic for another day. Today I just want to focus on the minutia.
If you want to succeed you must focus on nothing else until your trade is planned, setup, opened, managed, and closed.
Now, how are you going to do that when there are ringing phones, children needing you, jobs to go to, meals to prepare, lists to write, and Zappos constantly reminding you about all the cool stuff you left in the cart! (Oh, that part might just be me!)
Here’s a tip on how to find, maximize and keep your focus.
Focus follows fun.
I heard it from author, Peter McLaughlin in his book Unlimited Energy.
What fantastic insight! “Focus follows fun” means, if you’re not focused it’s not your fault! If you are having fun, your focus is going to show up every time! Remember the 10-year-old trying to focus on homework? …in misery? Well, that’s not going to work for us. Drudgery is not how we’re going to pull off flawless trading performance every day! As a matter of fact, it probably didn’t work on our 10-year-olds either.
If focus follows fun, then success is a positive feedback loop in trading, because successful trading means taking profit. Taking profit means watching an equity curve grow, and making money from trades on your computer is really really fun! Successful trading is so fun we can’t wait to do it again tomorrow.
When focus shows up, you stop making stupid random thoughtless trades, and you start paying attention with laser-sharp focus to what works, and you quit everything else.
Focus is going to show up and your Forex trading is going to take off when you delight in the right things. I know this is obvious but I’ll say it anyway. Taking profit is the right thing.
Take profit. Take profit. Take profit. Take profit…