POVLITZ Inc | Business and Entrepreneur

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10. Are you more positive about life or more negative? How you answer this question will greatly determine your overall happiness in life. Is your glass always half empty or half full? There is a law that is every bit as much valid as the law of gravity: it is called the law of attraction.

The law of attraction stipulates that whatever we think about, those thoughts will radiate out of our being and create circumstances and events and attract people that align with our thoughts. When we think positive thoughts, that positive mindset will radiate out of us, creating positive circumstances and positive events in our life and, as a result, will attract positive people into our lives. The flip side of this law is also true. When we think negative thoughts, that negative mindset will create negative circumstances and negative events in our lives, attracting negative people into our lives.

The power of this law plays an incredible part in determining your success or failure in life. Positive people are considered optimistic people, whereas negative people are considered pessimistic, but the only real difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the optimist believes there is an answer to every question and a solution to every problem, whereas the pessimist believes most questions have no answer and most problems are unsolvable. This mindset significantly limits the pessimist’s potential, success, and happiness in life. Optimists, on the other hand, create positive outcomes via the law of attraction.

The simple shifting of your mindset from negative to positive changes your entire world. Negative people are constantly shifting blame and frustrated about how unfair life is; they walk around with a victim mentality. Positive people accept responsibility for their circumstances and place themselves in a position to figure out how to avoid negative situations in the future.

If you want to become a successful trader, you will have to purge your negative attitude and adopt a positive mindset and attitude. Negativity when trading only creates more negative circumstances, more negative events and financial losses.

11. Do you fear your mistakes or do you embrace them and learn from them? All people make mistakes, but only wise people learn from them. The only true mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. Mistakes show us what needs improvement. Without mistakes, how would we know what we need to work on? Avoiding situations in which you might make a mistake could be the biggest mistake of all. When you have the courage to go out on a limb and make a decision, right or wrong, you risk making a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. Strong people make as many mistakes as weak people—the difference is that strong people admit their mistakes, laugh at them, learn from them, and become stronger. When you make mistakes, problems usually surface, which creates fear and anxiety.

Pessimists live a life fearful of making any mistake because that mistake will create a problem, and just about all problems, in their opinion, have no solution. Optimists can make just as many mistakes as, if not more than, pessimists. However, when a problem arises for an optimist, they aggressively work on it, believing it can be resolved, and the second they see the solution, the fear and anxiety dissipates.

When life hands you lemons, do you waste time sucking on them or do you learn to make lemonade? Making mistakes is part of being human. Just about all of life’s important lessons can only be learned the hard way, usually by making a mistake. Mistakes can be resolved and corrected as long as you believe there is a solution. So when you make a mistake that creates a problem, you need to muster the courage to face the problem head-on until a solution is achieved. As you do this repeatedly, unemotionally, you will develop the skill of effective problem solving. Remember, failure is not the problem; the problem lies in the time we waste lamenting over the problem rather than focusing in on the solution to the problem. Failure is not falling down; failure is staying down.

Learning from your mistakes is critical to your success. Choosing not to learn from your mistakes as you learn to trade will cause you to become a repeat offender. Your subconscious mind will take over and will form an unproductive bad habit, costing you money. You must pay attention to your mistakes and embrace them with a positive attitude.

12. Do you focus on what you have or on what you have lost? As you go through life making mistakes, you will inevitably lose things along the way—money, close relationships, personal property, you name it. But how much time do you spend holding onto those mistakes? How much time do you spend calculating your losses and wishing you had back everything you had lost? The longer you dwell on past failures and losses, the longer you will stay captive in your current state of failure. You must let go of your past failures and focus on where you are going.

Have you ever wondered why the rearview mirror is 50 times smaller than the windshield? The windshield is so much larger to help us stay focused on where we are going versus where we have been. Holding onto past wounds or losses will only stand in the way of achieving your rightful success as a trader. Every trader loses money and makes money as they trade, but successful traders will make more money than they lose. Successful traders spend no time worrying or thinking about their losses; they stay focused on the next opportunity that is knocking.

People that manage their poverty or mediocrity are so busy holding onto their past that they can’t grab onto future opportunities. Holding onto past losses or failures creates a bitter mindset. If you come to the trading table with a bitter mindset or victim mentality, you will bring with you all your past emotional baggage that has stood in the way of you becoming successful at anything you attempted in the past. It will stand in the way of you becoming a successful trader. If you want to be successful at trading, you must focus on what you have gained versus what you have lost.

13. Are you a goal setter or a goal quitter? When you set out to do something, do you persist until you succeed or do you get discouraged and quit along the way? One of the most important habits to develop is the habit of finishing what you started. My son recently graduated from high school. At his graduation ceremony, the principal stood up and congratulated everyone for completing 12 years of education. He also pointed out that during the last year of school, 48 percent of the students in the graduating class had dropped out.

They came so close, but they did not persist until the very end. Most people in life are rainbow chasers; they set new goals almost daily. Most of the time their new goals have nothing to do with yesterday’s, last week’s, or even last month’s goals. As a result, they never move forward in any one direction. You need to believe there is a reward at the end of every journey you embark on, a “pot of gold” at the end of each rainbow, or you will give up and never achieve your goal.

Setting goals helps you create a road map in life, outlining where you are going. Without that road map you can easily get off track without even knowing it and not know how to get back on. If you do not create goals as you learn to trade, you will not have any recognizable milestones of achievement.

Any great achievement will be accompanied by setbacks, but beginning with a clear goal in mind will keep you on track to reach your goals even after you hit a detour. Traders who set goals and persist until they succeed reach their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A trader’s pot of gold is described as executing your trades correctly 100 percent of the time. That does not mean you will make money 100 percent of the time, rather, that you consistently make more money than you lose. Persisting to achieve your realistic goals is nothing more than discipline in action.