I’m doing my best to keep to the commitment I made to blog every Friday and so far, so good. It helps that I am always getting contacted about Levi Johnston all the time. That keeps me fielding emails from all types of media outlets from USA Today to TMZ. At this moment, I am sitting down at my computer watching my forex charts. I have been looking for a good trade to end the week on. As I was doing that, a thought hit me and I wanted to share.
I have been trading for years now. In order to be successful, I have software that I study charts from. I practice (paper trade) to learn these charts and how they operate as best I can. I track the progress in my practices and then when I trade live (the real game), I look for setups that I have taken in my practice sessions. When I see those setups, I am supposed to trade them every time, or else it messes up my averages and my trading plan.
I saw a trade setup this morning that fit my criteria…and…I didn’t take it… It was like, I was up to bat, the pitcher threw me a strike down the middle and I didn’t swing.
There have been many great sports analogies given by authors and philosophers for a while now. The fact of the matter is that you really do miss 100% of the pitches that you don’t swing at. Pitches in baseball and opportunities in life are synonymous. I had an opportunity to have a positive trade. The trade actually worked out just as I thought it would have. But, I let the fear of being wrong, the embarrassment of a swing and a miss make me pass on the pitch, so opportunity missed…strike!
Fear has gripped the entire world! We have a tendency to think about past failures rather than past successes. We magnify the significance of the failure as a pattern and downplay the successes, attributing it to luck or something else. In other words we are more prone to program ourselves to look for ways to fail, more likely to wait for what we perceive as that perfect pitch coming down the middle of the strike zone rather than actively looking for ways to be a success, of getting up to bat and swinging at any pitch that’s in the “strike zone.”
Pitchers have many different types of pitches, just as life has many different types of opportunities. Life really is one big game of something. Those who succeed are those who practice diligently and visualize their success in the game, so when the game presents them with a hittable pitch, they swing. They know that practice and preparation are on their side. They know that in order to be a successful hitter, they have to get up there and swing.
Sure, they may miss. Sure, they may go into a slump. Even the best hitters get into slumps from time to time. That’s when they really begin to trust their practice sessions, trust their fundamentals and keep swinging.
I for one can no longer afford to let good pitches go by. It’s ok if I strike out. Some of the best hitters in baseball have high strike out rates. As a matter of fact, good hitters are successful only about 30% of the time they get up to bat. That 30% is good enough for millions of dollars and a shot at the hall of fame. Now, imagine if the great hitters of the game got up to the plate and just stood there?
Ask yourself, “Am I just standing there?” “What am I practicing for, success or failure?” “How can I get in the game?” This just “hit me,” so I wanted to share. Have a great weekend. Tank Jones aka Mr. Tankism
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