When I first began trading on the exchange floor, eons ago, I looked at the other traders and thought that I was at least as smart as a lot of the traders who were very successful. Yet, they were successful and I was not. What was the difference? The difference was that they believed in their abilities as successful traders as proven to them by their long term success.   I had no such history of success, but I had read as much as I could by Napoleon Hill, Og Mandino and others and I believed, to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, that:

 ”We become what we think about all day long”.

 To control my thoughts and establish a belief system that included my being a successful trader. I wrote down three affirmative statements on a 3″x5″ card, put the card in my shirt pocket and read it to myself several times a day. Recently, I found one of the first cards I used 30 years ago when I cleaned out a drawer at home. I remember reading the words hundreds of times. My card said:

Now, you may ask, was I the best broker in the pit? The answer is no.   Did I make $500 a day when I was telling myself that I did? No again.   Did I deal from a pedestal of calmness? Not exactly.   What I did do, was progress in the direction of these goals.  I repeated these lines over and over until I believed them. In the end, I had the confidence of someone who believed himself to be a success. Programming myself to be confident in my trading prior to actually achieving that success was crucial to growing from an also-ran trader to someone able to earn a living trading.   When you write out your own affirmations be sure that you word your affirmation as a statement of fact. You are not tentatively asking for something. You are making a declaration of what you want to become as a clearly-stated reality.   If you want to be a success at trading, or any other endeavor, first you need to convince yourself that you are indeed a success. Then, you need to work to make that goal a reality.   In the words of Bruce Lee (yes, that Bruce Lee), 

“as you think, so shall you become”.

Wishing you success in your trading, Jeff

Jeff Quinto is a 37 year veteran futures trader and world-class trading coach. Jeff coaches traders from around the world in his Electronic Trader Mentoring Program and his new Upgrading Your Trading Online Course.