| The Perfection Trap |
| Written by Adrienne Toghraie |
| Wednesday, 11 June 2008 00:00 |
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Are you trying to create the perfect trading system? If so, you may also be unwilling to settle for anything less than the perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect mate, the perfect schools for your children, the perfect vacation and the perfect night’s sleep to refresh you perfectly for the perfect day to come ? If you could achieve all of that perfection in your life, would it make you happy ? Would it make you content ? A better trader ? A better spouse or parent ? A better human being? Mr. Perfection Roy is a brilliant man with an enormous capacity to achieve success as a professional trader and in his personal life. The problem is that he actually achieves and produces very little because he is obsessed with doing everything perfectly and in having everything in his life perfect. For that reason, Roy has spent much of the past twenty-five years working on creating the perfect trading system. Periodically, he allows himself to feel that his system is ready to trade and trades in real time. At first, his system performs…you guessed it…perfectly and he makes a killing in the market for a month and possibly a few weeks more. At this point, he calls me and waxes poetic about the perfection of his system. Shortly thereafter, his system will generate some losses as well, and as soon as that happens, his trading goes into a steep decline. Within a short period of time, he will have given back everything he made in the markets and sometimes a bit more. Once the cycle ends, Roy begins to fiddle with his system all over again until it is perfect and will create only profits and no losses. And what about Roy’s perfect life ? Roy is not married because he has never found the perfect woman. He has had many girlfriends, but he falls out of love with each one as soon as he discovers her imperfections. He does not own a house because he could never settle on one – there was always a problem with each home where he has lived. In fact, he has moved literally dozens of times throughout the course of his adulthood. When Roy begins a project, he works on it compulsively, attempting to make it perfect, which is impossible. So, he fiddles with it endlessly, unable to let it go. The list of his life’s incompletions continues to grow longer and longer. Perfection and Success Achieving success in any endeavor is difficult enough without adding the need to achieve perfection. Anyone who has ever used a Microsoft product knows that perfection was never achieved in the product design. But Microsoft was able to corner the market. It got its customers close enough. And it did so in a sloppy and non-intuitive way. However, it entered the market in a timely fashion. Had Bill Gates waited to achieve perfection in his operating system, he would never have been able to enter the race. In trading, there is no perfection to be achieved. There is no perfect trading system, there are no perfect trades and there is no perfect trader. Losses are a natural part of the trading process. In fact, you could almost say that losses are a perfect part of a trading system. The object is to limit the losses in your trading so your gains outpace them. The object should never be to completely eliminate any chance of loss. This would mean that you had fallen into the ‘Perfection Trap.’ How it all begins… Roy’s confinement in the Perfection Trap began at such a young age that he never had a chance to escape. His parents were critical and demanding from the day that he gained consciousness. Roy could never please them. Regardless of how hard he tried to be perfect, his parents would always find something with which to find fault. To make matters worse, they also withheld their praise and approval. The result was that Roy learned at the most critical point in the development of his worldview that the most important thing in life was to achieve perfection. Here are some of the major paths that traders travel to arrive in the Perfection Trap: 1. Perfection-demanding parents This is Roy’s background. It is a rather common one. The faces may be different, but the end result is the same. Parents are fearful of their own inadequacies. Since they were probably raised in an equally critical and approval-withholding environment, they do not see the harm they are doing in repeating the pattern on their innocent children. 2. Fear of failure and loss Some traders arrive at the point of demanding perfection in their trading after experiencing the pain of loss. Rather than dealing with those feelings and working their way through them, they determine to never experience that kind of pain again. The only way to never experience a trading loss is to become the perfect trader. Each time the trader experiences another loss; he is even more determined to be less vulnerable by being more perfect. 3. Praise for being perfect The reverse of the highly critical family life is one where the child is praised over and over for achieving perfection – in school, in sports and performance situations, in solving problems or achieving goals. This praise and recognition can come from parents, but it can also come from teachers, coaches, other family members, friends and even from total strangers. The physiological rush that comes from that kind of praise can imprint on a vulnerable young mind the desire to experience the rush again and again. It is exactly like the reaction the brain has to an addictive drug. 4. Perfection-obsessed cultural forces If you watch television commercials, you will hear the word “perfect” used more and more frequently – the ‘perfect’ weddings, the ‘perfect’ vacation, the ‘perfect’ home, the ‘perfect’ lawn, the ‘perfect’ sunset. In fact, the word “perfect” is nearly ubiquitous in the advertising barrage of our senses. Spend a day home sick lying on your sofa watching commercial television and start counting the times that the word “perfect” comes up in ads, not to mention the programming itself. Of course, it is not just television but all the media that are infected with this notion of perfection. The notion of perfection being the endgame for all human endeavors has taken on a value beyond its usefulness. But the result is a subconscious infection in the minds of far too many. 5. Feelings of insecurity and loss of value When a trader has deep-seated feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and/or worthlessness, he often attempts to overcompensate by attempting to achieve perfection in his work and in his environment. Achieving perfection will serve to prove his worth and settle any doubts he or others may have. Of course, the harder he strives for perfection, the more insecure he actually appears to the outside world. 6. The fear of loss of control. In a profession in which a trader can easily feel that he has little or no control, the achievement of perfection can quell any sense of not being in control. For the insecure, achieving perfection means that you have total control. What these factors all have in common at their very base is fear. The achievement of perfection makes an individual feel all-powerful. In fact, the achievement of perfection is as close to godliness as we can come. But the Piper must be paid, as we will see... For Traders – The Cost of Pursuing Perfection Just as the Pied Piper demanded his payment, it is easy to see many of the not-so-hidden costs of the pursuit of perfection by looking at Roy’s experience, as well as those of other traders who are stuck in the Perfection Trap: 1. Difficulty in taking action To demand perfect trades that do not generate losses means that a trader hesitates each and every time he should be taking action based on the signals he gets from his system or methodology. Instead of perfect trades, this hesitation can lead to no trades or bad trades. The demands of perfection can progress from hesitation, to difficulty in taking action, to the inability to take action, which means that trading stops all together. 2. Loss of self-discipline Instead of increasing self-discipline, the pursuit of perfection ultimately undermines self-discipline by putting unreasonable pressure on the individual trader to be perfect. At first, the pursuit of perfection may guide a trader to a more and more disciplined practice. But as time passes, he will feel obliged to raise the bar higher and higher. In Roy’s experience, this usually resulted in a total collapse of his disciplines, like a dieter who succumbs to binging after a diet that is too rigid. For a trader, this means the sudden abandonment of the controls on his trading, which can lead to significant losses. 3. Instability Like Roy who moved from place to place looking for the perfect environment for his trading and his living space, a trader seeking perfection will find that he is constantly uprooting his life. Whether he is perpetually on the move, remodeling his space or changing spouses or partners, this trader’s life will be riddled with instability. Unfortunately for him, one of the most important cornerstones of a successful trader’s life is stability. 4. Unhappy, unfulfilled personal life The pursuit of perfection in trading almost surely spills over into a trader’s personal life. The search for the perfect spouse will result in divorce, one after another. It also results in the alienation of one’s children and friendships. A trader who feels that he has found the “perfect mate” will make his new love feel as though she is a queen. He will shower her with praise and presents, setting her up on a pedestal. But, she will be in for a rude awakening after he discovers that she is not a goddess, but only a human being. If stability is essential to a trader’s success, a happy and supportive home life is the basis of that stability. Although the allure of perfection is a very powerful one, as we have seen, it is possible to loosen its grip on a trader’s life. 1. The first step in escaping from the Perfection Trap is the recognition that you are in its possession. As you read this article, did you see yourself in it? Do you recognize your own need to be perfect, to have the “perfect things” in your life? 2. If you feel that you have a problem with perfection, take an honest assessment of your own Perfection Trap: • How long have you been in it? 3. Once you have looked at the underlying causes and the nature of your own Perfection Trap, write a list of the things in your life that it has cost you? What have you given up? For example: • Peace of mind 4. Now imagine what it would be like to give up the notion that you must achieve perfection. What would you gain? To answer that question, you can simply look at the list you wrote for step 3. At this point, you must decide if the benefits of endlessly seeking perfection outweigh the cost and the potential gain of not trying to be perfect. The Alternative You are asking, if I give up my quest for perfection, what will take its place ? Will the result be chaos, mediocrity, poverty, sloth and crudeness all around ? Of course not! You can still exercise good taste and high standards. But you can allow yourself to be satisfied with a job done well or done to the best you can do. You will discover that very good and excellent can also bring outstanding results. Now you can sit back and take pleasure in the foibles and shortcomings in others as they display their attainment for “perfection.” You can relax and enjoy the process of trading. Best of all, you can learn to appreciate all that you have. The result will be that you can now trade with a sense of joy, with the knowledge that loss is coming and it is okay because it has been built into your system. You can relax in the knowledge that family and friends support you, and that each day is a gift. Oh, and by the way, your trading will almost certainly advance to the next step. |
Are you the perfect trader? Is that what you want to be? Do you seek the perfect trade that unlocks all of the doors to your dreams?
