Why is self-motivation so important in the Forex?
Let me start off by saying that the forex doesn’t ask for any specific qualifications or demand a set IQ score, this simply doesn’t get factored in. So it doesn’t matter how many letters you have after your name, the forex markets are open to everyone.
Learning to trade the forex is very much a personal journey that each and everyone of us who decides to venture on it, will have to endure. We will all experience many different challenges and this is where our own grit and determination plays such a huge role.
If you are the type of person who, when faced with a challenge, faces it head on rather than giving up at the first hurdle, then the forex may well be the place for you. It’s a challenge I think most traders don’t quite realise just how tough and frustrating it can become.
It’s important to recognise the fact we are all individuals, with different strengths and weaknesses and being able to harness our own uniqueness and mould this quality to help us become individual traders who trade the forex markets, is the only way to progress. Expecting to be able to learn how to trade the forex markets and exactly copy a certain trader, trade for trade, is asking too much. No two traders will trade exactly the same.
Keep on knocking at that door
Yes, we need plenty of guidance from experienced traders or mentors but ultimately the journey and how far we can progress, is down to our own self-motivation and sheer will to keep on knocking at that door.
The door will open eventually but not by throwing money at it and trying to buy the key but through bashing it down with hard work, knowledge and persistence.
This self-motivation to actively push ourselves into learning the ins and outs of trading is what differentiates the traders who have a great chance of making it from the ones that just want a free meal ticket without putting in any of the hard work.
Nothing in life is free unfortunately, there’s always going to be a trade-off and the forex is a perfect example, it doesn’t require you spending thousands of pounds on fancy robots or technical systems but rather requires something more valuable – your time.
To get the many hours of screen time and experience needed and your patience to master what works best for you, requires much time spent in front of a computer and learning your craft.
Being hand fed the right methods to trade is of course going to help you progress as a trader and get you on the right track but absorbing the method and learning it off by heart, is only half the battle. There will inevitably be a point when you hit a threshold level and at this point it’s down to your own motivation and passion to translate that technique and add your own spin to it.
It’s basically about making the style of trading you have chosen to use, your own. You’ll never be 100% confident about trading unless you can incorporate your own personality.
Many forex retail traders base their trading from an office at home, this can result in the feeling of isolation. Forums are a great tool which can aid in reducing the loneliness and help traders to communicate ideas and get feedback. This doesn’t change the fact that you and you alone are the only one with the power to enter or exit a trade and this is the sole reason we need to have this self- motivation and belief in our own trading.
Trading is a very personal business and being able to push on when trading gets hard requires the resolve only we ourselves can instill.
You can’t force a trader to do hours of back testing or trawl the internet for specific pieces of information that may help a certain area of their trading. With the increasing amount of knowledge and information to be found on the internet nowadays, it’s a bit of a lottery if you can find the right information you require anyway. This again comes back to self-motivation, being determined enough to sieve through many different websites and forums on the hope of finding something that clicks with your own personality, is draining.
When you feel you are getting nowhere
If at times you find the challenge is beginning to overwhelm you, rather than give up, take a break from trading and try to reboot your brain. There’s no set timescale you can use to say how long the learning process will take. There’s always going to be new things to learn but getting to a level where you feel trading is a consistent and calm process is down to the individual, but as a guide I would compare learning to trade the forex with like studying for a degree, if that helps put things into perspective.
The ability to learn
Therefore, the ability to learn new things and self-motivate ourselves is what sets traders apart. The traders who have the belief they can make it in the forex markets will most certainly be in a far better mind-set and position to find out the correct information, than the traders who simply hope they can succeed with minimal effort.
If you are prepared to put in the hard work the rewards are definitely there for the taking.
This short article was designed to get across the point that we must take our trading career very seriously and putting in less than 100% will always leave us short. It’s a journey that will hold many different challenges and requires a certain grit and self-motivation that only comes from inside yourself.
Subject: Self-Motivation, the Key to Your Forex Success 
Thu Jan 07, 2016 9:20 pm
