Ideal Management as Your Own Trading Coach!
Welcome back to Market Mamas! As you know, we are day traders from the US. Becky is in the Pacific Northwest and Kendra is in Northern Cali. We decided to create this Market Mamas day trading psychology podcast to share all the growing pains and inner workings that developing traders experience. To that aim, we are always looking to be of service in helping to guide developing traders and spread awareness of the amazing opportunity that trading is, as well as the amount of hard work and dedication it takes for success. In this episode, we wanted to talk to you all about a really critical component of any trader’s arsenal on their journey to success.
Recently Becky was reminded of something Kendra and her reference all the time in their personal relationship with each other, but we haven’t given nearly enough credit to in a Market Mamas episode yet. It is the all too common experience of not practicing enough self love, respect or appreciation. Now, don’t make it weird! We are not going to get all emotional or sentimental here. But think about it - when a close friend or trading partner has a shit trading day, what’s your reaction? Remind them that they know better and asked why the f they did the same dumb shit they’ve done before yet again? Or do you remind them to breathe, take a walk, remember how far they’ve come, and that one hard trading day does not define them? For Kendra and Becky, the second option is always the case. We choose to show them love and compassion, because chances are, they are already sitting in some pretty harsh feelings about their own damn self and adding fuel to that fire is not actually going to help stabilize them. In those moments, when someone lets you in and shows you their less than appealing situation, as in a crap trading session, they are vulnerable and they trust you with the feedback they will receive. That is an opportunity to either settle them down, encourage healthy steps forward, and remind them on how not everything revolves around this one day’s outcome.
Alternatively, you could rub salt in the wound with careless words or damage their wounded pride in that moment and further their remorseful mood… Well, obviously you won't be a jerk to them. So then, why do we do it to ourselves? We can’t be the only ones who are way too dang rough on ourselves when we have a hard losing day. We are not talking about a small stop out that honors our process. But rather, a real shit day - if we over-leveraged and then lost, or full on tilted and wrecked a week’s or more worth of progress. In those moments, we’ll admit it, we both have gotten so mad! We have mentally beat up on ourselves, cried, snapped at loved ones, regretted the choices and doubted our true skill and place as traders. But you know what? That’s bullshit! Because the TRUTH is that we are skilled, dedicated, driven, relentless day traders AND are humans who are not flawless. So, don’t we also deserve to be spoken to with that respect and patience and grace? Even from ourselves, and really *especially from ourselves?
Becoming a successful, profitable trader is a crazy hard endeavor. Anyone who has really attempted it knows it too! So, you have to expect many, many failures to help teach you as you grow! A failure is simply feedback that what you tried in a given situation was less than ideal and you should study a better way to approach it when that setup presents itself again. Simple. Doesn’t mean you are an idiot and will never be successful. It means you still have lessons to learn, data to study, a new style to practice. This is real life, and real is never perfect. We love the adage that life is too short to spend another day at war with yourself. This is the freaking truth! Especially since it takes an average of 3-5 years for day traders to truly find consistent success, you cannot spend all those years in emotional turmoil because that is just not sustainable or fair to yourself and your family around you. Because, let’s be honest, our rage and depression moments impact our loved ones around us heavily too. Those emotions are toxic and that toxicity spills over something fierce. It is not conducive to an environment to learn within either. And if failures are meant to be teachers, we gotta lock down the unhelpful emotions so that we can in fact accept the lessons. Otherwise it will have been a giant waste of a day at a minimum!
A failure is simply feedback that what you tried in a given situation was less than ideal and you should study a better way to approach it when that setup presents itself again.
Day trading is largely a solo sport, as we’ve said before too. We execute at our home computers, generally always by ourselves. Many of us have paid mentors and trading friends for sure, but we are alone in our trading sessions and thereby also act as our own trading coach while our game is being played. So, we need to learn from some badass coaches and up our game. Becky & Kendra are certainly aware of and now are prioritizing this daily. We love this quote from comedian Bob Nelson, it is “You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within them.” This is how we should coach ourselves too! Fuel our learning and openness to grow and expand. Not regret experiences that already happened and might as well then be productive for our improvement! Be encouraging and loving and proud of what we have done so far! Speak to the technicals and the literal lessons as our own coach, but do so with an attitude that you would expect when you see a coach teaching your child or your best friend - productive, patient, reasonable, and with a long game mentality for who we are still growing into!
And, since it ties so well into this whole concept of less self judgment and more self compassion as you are evolving, don’t forget to shut down comparison too! The goal is to get better than the you of yesterday, not anyone else. Strive for 1% better each week and remain patient while that experience compounds. Your trading style and system mixed with your personality and lens will inevitably be slightly different than anyone else anyways, so they are not apples to apples.
We can’t forget to be proud of how far we have come too! One of our favorite actresses of all time is Reese Witherspoon. And she has been quoted saying “With the right kind of coaching and determination, you can accomplish anything.” Ugh, we love that!! Guidance plus our own effort is a powerful combination!! If we study under strong mentors and put in the focused time on our charts to gather experience, then the third key component to creating success is our personal self-talk and true belief. Can we give ourselves the right kind of coaching? The coaching that our best friend deserves, should she be also attempting something as crazy hard as day trading. Because you also deserve what your best friend deserves! Grace, understanding, patience, respect for how far you’ve come and the sacrifices you’ve already made and continue to make. These are the components to an ideal psychology coach.
Remember: how you show up for yourself is how you teach others to show up for you too. This is a big deal for our self-worth and life happiness. We are teaching others around us how much value we see in our own selves. And so we say we always try to remember that we come from the top shelf! The best way to ensure that everyone who interacts with you knows that, is to show them that that is who you know that you are as well! We can express this by loving ourselves through this crazy hard journey and allowing the people who are right for us to also love and support us on our way up. In this way, we can more thoroughly enjoy the ride while we are at it. After all, nothing in this life is truly guaranteed. If we wait to let ourselves feel happy until we’ve made our first million as traders, that is a heck of a lot of time to be unhappy. So, we say let’s just not. This is our wish for all of us for the best trader life - that we allow our trading journey to be full of excitement, learning, little victories mixed with the lesson days, and graceful anticipation for what the challenges of each new level will present.
We are not kidding, we 100% see this is a pro psychology tip for all developing day traders! Because we are humans and this is our life. F spending a huge part of it in misery and wishing for the greener days. We will have lesson days if we ever want to be a highly paid trader. That is how it works. We have learned this pro tip - not being a jerk to ourselves - by living it both ways. And learning from those days that when we shut down the negativity way the heck sooner, our mind, body and spirit were so much more peaceful and we were much more quickly able to study a better way to execute on the day that we had and get back to positive energy to channel into our next trading session. The carry over energy matters in trading and we each have to figure out how to coach ourselves back into a healthy, productive headspace as quickly as possible after a less than ideal outcome so that we can a) have a more enjoyable life, and b) get back to winning asap. So, we wish for you all, and each other too, to coach ourselves as if we love ourselves wholly and have faith in our trajectory to success despite any one session's outcome.
Thank you to everyone who is subscribing to our podcast, reading our blogs, and providing us feedback! We are here to talk openly about everything that may help us all level up within our lives, be it day trading or otherwise. And this topic is a powerful one for us all to really hear. Our best trading days are ahead! We wish you all the very best for your lives. Happy Trading!