Traders who ask “how” have already impeded their progress toward their destination. The means to achieving any end are always the unknown. But, traders who insist upon knowing each step and how each step will be achieved are afraid of dealing with uncertainty. A certain degree of uncertainty is as essential to the process of reaching your goal as a certain degree of loss is to making a profit in the markets.

The ‘Uncertainty Continuum’

Each typical business enterprise begins with great uncertainty. Toward the middle of the journey, we can persuade ourselves that we can clearly see the end in sight.  However, for traders, uncertainty is with them at every step of the way to the end of the journey. It is just a question of how far along the continuum the uncertainty factor lays at each step and for each trader.

If you are an individual who needs to be at the farthest end of the uncertainty continuum that is closest to certainty, you will likely spend a great deal of time feeling anxious.  This does not mean that you should not attempt to do everything you can to prevent the most obvious missteps from occurring.  Fending off easily preventable problems will maximize profits.  Furthermore, I am a great proponent of planning for all possible contingencies in order to invite as little chaos into your trading as possible.

The point here is to take a look at the point on the uncertainty continuum at which you are the most comfortable and efficient.  If you find that you cannot deal with uncertainty, then you will have to expend more effort planning for all of the contingencies along the way and you may be too fearful of assuming risk to be a successful trader.  If you are at the farthest end of the continuum away from certainty, then you may be too willing to accept risk, which is also not a viable position for a career as a long-term trader.

Goal Setting

Once you set your eyes upon the destination, you begin to feel a new energy that propels you toward the finish line.  The great magic of goal setting is that as soon as you commit completely to a goal, your unconscious becomes incredibly creative at finding ways to reach the goal.  This process works continuously, even when you are sleeping.  The next morning, you can awaken with an idea that lifts you over the next obstacle.  As you continue to focus on the destination, your mind will become more and more creative, looking for new opportunities that would not have otherwise been available to you.

However, if you are fixed only on the means of achieving the goal, you fail to put your energy into commitment to the goal itself and shut off the creative problem-solving part of your brain.  You also send your unconscious the message that you do not trust yourself to solve the problems involved in reaching your destination.  Instead, you plant doubts about the goal itself.

Identifying the Destination

You know the old saying – “If you don’t know where you want to go, then one road is as good as another.”  Mel was a trader who could never tell you where he wanted to go.  But, when I finally got Mel to identify a goal, he proceeded to map out every step he would need to take to get himself there.  Then, he took it step-by-step until he had eventually completed all of his steps and had arrived at his goal.  The only problem with this process was that Mel could have and should have arrived at his destination long before he finally did.  But, his focus was on the means and not on the destination.  He needed to re-evaluate his actions after completing each step. 

Sometimes after completing one action, other actions are not necessary.  Creative solutions that come from serious goal-orientation allow you to leapfrog over obstacles that you perceive in the beginning.  But, too often, these obstacles are illusory or they are established to keep out the uncommitted.

Mel’s problem was not the planning or the obstacles.  It was the fact that he had not found a destination that he believed in enough or for which he had enough passion.  The right destination can sometimes take more time to discover than it takes to achieve it.  In Mel’s case, he was unwilling to do the work it would take to find out why he was so reluctant to set a meaningful goal for himself.  The best part of the process for Mel was that once he had achieved his first major goal, he was willing to set other goals.  And, he was willing to look at what was holding him back from setting a powerful goal that he really believed in and one that stirred his passion for it.

In Mel’s case, he had stopped believing that he could have what he wanted in life.  After a series of failures to achieve his goals, he was fearful of being disappointed again.  Even worse, he had stopped believing that he had what it takes to reach his goals.  So, he stopped setting goals.  Instead, he set his sights on merely making it through the day.

When You do not have a Destination

There is another problem with not setting powerful goals.  We are supposed to have goals and when we do not have a goal, we tend to lose focus, a sense of meaning in our lives, and we can become depressed.

Scientists have hypothesized that our brains evolved from the primitive reptilian brain, which is a pure goal-seeking mechanism.  If you have ever watched a reptile as he sets his sights on a goal and then lumbers over and around each obstacle in pursuit of his goal, you will understand the power of this goal-seeking mechanism.

For this reason, it is equally important to set a new goal even before we reach our present one.  Many traders discover that once they have achieved a major goal, they feel a great sense of accomplishment, peace of mind and high self-esteem, which is followed quickly by a sense of emptiness, loss of energy and generalized weariness and dissatisfaction with life.  Thus, the most effective way to deal with the issue of goal-setting and goal-achievement is to develop the skill of setting specific goals that you believe in and that you want to achieve and determine the actions toward those goals.  Just when you have your destination in sight, start working on the next stop over the horizon.