Overcome Failure

You always pass failure on the way to success.Mickey Rooney

Failure is inevitable if we are to succeed in life. Unfortunately, many people do not know how to overcome failure, and they are stopped by it when they encounter one. The ability to overcome failure is one big difference between successful and mediocre people. After all, we should pass failure on the way to success, so it is the ability to pass it that makes the difference between those who eventually reach success and those who don’t.

So, knowing that overcoming failure is essential, what should we do? Here are some tips to help you overcome failure:

1. Rise up and don’t regret; you have spent your time wisely

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.George Bernard Shaw

When we fail, we might be tempted to think that we have wasted our time and thus regret it. But that’s should not be the case. The fact that you have done something is much better than doingnothing. Many people who despise persons who fail never do anything themselves. Rise up and move on. The regret lies not in doing, but in not doing.

2. Understand that failure is there to bring you wisdom

Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.William Saroyan

Failure is there not without a reason. It’s there to give you the wisdom you need to succeed. Each failure you encounter increases your wisdom and brings you one step closer to success. If you have this mindset, you will see failure differently. You will see each failure as an opportunity to learn.

3. Learn as much as possible from the failure

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.Albert Einstein

While failure brings you wisdom, how much wisdom you will get depends entirely on your ability to harvest it. So don’t waste the opportunity to learn; harvest wisdom as much as possible from the failure. If you fail to do this, you may waste a lot of time by repeating the same mistakes in the future.

4. Don’t give up; maybe you are only one step away from success

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.Thomas A. Edison

The thought of giving up is tempting, especially when we have failed over and over again. But who knows that maybe you are only one step away from success? Will you waste the long journey you have passed when you are already so close to your destination?

So hold on tight and don’t give up. Thomas Edison failed thousands of times to perfect the light bulb. He knew what it means not to give up.

5. Maintain your enthusiasm

Not only you should keep on trying, you should also do it with the same level of enthusiasm as when you first began. Otherwise your subsequent effort will have less and less power.

So how do you maintain enthusiasm? One good way is by realizing that you are now one step closer to success thanks to the lessons you learn. There’s no reason not to be enthusiastic when you are getting closer to success. Another way is to keep your mind on the destination, which brings us to the next point.

6. Keep dreaming big dreams

Always have your destination in mind; keep dreaming your big dreams. Spend time to visualize them and let the dreams energize you. Let them make you passionate and enthusiastic. Once you cease dreaming, soon you will also lose your energy and be back to mediocrity. To overcome all the obstacles you encounter you always need a greater why, and that why is provided by your dreams.

7. Keep your confidence in yourself

Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.

Belva Davis

Keep your confidence in yourself despite the failure.
Of course, you need to put a lot of effort and learn as much as possible from the failure, but you have the ability to make your dream come true. Many people who achieve great undertakings have no special trait. They are just ordinary people with extraordinary attitude. Let’s be one of them.

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How To Quiet Rat Brain

All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone…Pascal

It doesn’t matter what you call it—rat brain, old brain, limbic brain, monkey brain, emotional brain.  Thirty years ago, I decided to call it the rat brain, so let’s go with that.  This is the part of your brain that causes you to make irrational decisions in the heat of the trading day. This is particularly true when we are in highly volatile markets such as those that I expect to occur for the remainder of 2011.

Your rat brain instills fear and blinds you to opportunity. Your rat brain fills you with greed and blinds you to danger.  This is the part of your trading brain that must be both understood and tamed if you want to take your trading to higher and higher levels of success.

The rat brain delights in filling you with flight of ideas, endless chatter, rapidly changing thoughts and mixed messages that that cause you endless confusion. The incessant chatter can be exhausting.  Eventually you may feel like your head is going around in circles, that your

thoughts are upside down and you are exhausted, drifting on a path to nowhere and then in the depths of depression or anxiety because you can’t turn down the noise.  It’s like a reality show/soap opera filled with drama, pathos and endless cliff-hangers.  You are fighting with and within yourself.  No matter how hard you try, you are so captivated that you can’t change the channel let alone turn off the TV!  The rat brain loves this.  It adores putting you into such a state of confusion that you end up doing—for lack of a better term---rat-brained activities. These may feel OK in the moment, but they end up causing untold grief and suffering.

Examples of such activities in trading include taking profits too soon, trying to pick bottoms or tops, trading what you think (not what you see), getting into positions without a plan, letting losses run, talking yourself into and out of positions, being frozen and unable to take setups, feeling upside down and all around, and committing almost every trading error under the sun.  This has happened to me and it has happened to you. My greatest challenge in trading was to learn to control my rat brain because it truly was holding me back from being the trader I knew I could be.  After years of struggling with these impulses that seemed to come suddenly and from a place that I did not understand, I found the answer to the question:  How can I quiet my rat brain so that I can achieve my full potential as a trader?

The answer was meditation.  In my opinion, this is the best way to truly tame the rat brain.   Like trading, meditation is simple but it is not easy.  One of the most difficult things for human beings to do is nothing.  Just sit and do nothing.  It’s like that saying:  Don’t just do something—sit there.  Easy to say but really challenging to do.  The ultimate goal of meditation is to be centered.  When you are in your center, you are at the ultimate point of  silence, balance and clarity..  Meditation is both a natural and a surrendering technique.  It is one of trust and inner release.

There are many ways to meditate. I have found a way that works for me and have taught it to a number of traders. This technique may or may not be right for you, but I have found that it resonates with many traders at all skill and age levels.

You may want to begin by focusing on the breath while you meditate. Whenever your rat brain starts getting “chatty,” observe your thoughts, let them drift down gently like leaves falling softly from a tree and landing without sound on the ground.  Continue to focus on the breath.  Soften your eyes and feel them falling down into their sockets.  Turn the eyes and the ears inward to watch the breath.  As you go more deeply into meditation, turn all of your senses inward to watch the breath and feel your brain soften and become a distant observer. 

With time and practice, you will look forward to those precious times of meditation.  They will be a good habit and an integral part of your life.  Your world will become more vivid and you will become more awake, alive, vital, responsible and effective---both in and out of the markets.

We sit around in a ring and suppose.  But the SECRET sits in the middle and knows…Robert Frost.

Janice Dorn, M.D., Ph.D.

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