Discipline : The Art of Its Cultivation

August 1, 2011 in Blog 4 Comments

In my last post , I discussed the importance of Discipline to Trading. You can find that post here.

http://www.twoscrolls.com/blog/discipline-over-rated/

In this post , I intend to delve a little bit further into the idea of Discipline and how to begin the Art of its cultivation. Lets begin

When Discipline is discussed on a Trading Education website , the focus is usually on whether or not the Trader follows his system , had a system , cut his losses quickly, etc. However,  this method of looking at the discipline problem is not likely to solve it at all , for traders who recognize this as an issue within themselves. The reason for this is,  because it does not go to the heart of the actual matter , which is that of, the TRAIT OF DISCIPLINE ITSELF and its essence.

If you are asked if you are disciplined or not , chances are, that there are areas in your life where you might be/feel you are extremely disciplined. However, you may  find yourself lacking discipline when it comes to other things. So this leads me to mention the seemingly obvious statement  that “Discipline needs to be discussed with respect to a specific Objective”.

The problem with this statement however, is that True Discipline does not exist in isolation to an objective, but rather should be cultivated as a character trait , that spans all your actions , attitudes , beliefs , Words and mindsets.

As an example, it is virtually impossible to constantly fail to keep your promises to friends, family or colleagues, but yet keep the promises you make to yourself in the process of achieving any goal you set for yourself.  The human mind simply does not work that way, but rather, it uses a series of historically enacted reference points in forming any new decisions it has to make.

From the point of view of these pre-established reference points ,  the mind proceeds to evaluate and decide.

Consider a set of data points in any field, which tend to cluster around an average, the human mind also tends to extrapolate an “Average Behaviour” , in order to trigger a response similar or as closely fit to the average it extrapolated, when it is confronted with an aspect of your life requiring the exercise of Discipline.

This is the base reason why smokers continue to smoke , coffee drinkers continue to drink coffee, successful traders continue to remain so, whilst failed traders tend to repeat the same actions over and over again.

This is also likely to be the same reason why you may not have realized the Trading and Investing Goals and Objectives you may have set for yourself. If you have been sitting on the sidelines, intending to invest someday , this has become your referential data points and the chances of you ever actually taking action are closer to nil than you think , while the end result of this is that you lose out on the opportunities present in the Markets daily.

There is usually a “MEAN CONFIGURATION OF BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS  ” associated with different situations you are faced with. All of which are driven by the underlying Fight or Flight response prevalent in living things, all underpinned by the PAIN or PLEASURE principle. [ The Pain or Pleasure principle  in essence, states that we gravitate towards actions which cause us pleasure , and away from those which cause us pain ]

Now understanding, that behaviors are driven at an underlying level by this PAIN/PLEASURE principle, cultivating Discipline within any area of your life must first have to do with identifying the predominant Behavior driver  in that scenario. chance are that it would require discipline , if the underlying driver is Painful, and you will need to do a deepened association switch to cultivate discipline in that area.

In attempting to cultivate a blanket of discipline across all areas of your life, one of the essential pre-requisites must be a BRUTAL HONESTY with yourself.

You must adopt the mindset of getting RESULT and not tolerating EXCUSES. Be gentle with others , but extremely TOUGH ON YOURSELF.This is critical.

Keep your word or Do not give it at all even for the simplest things. And if you ABSOLUTELY have to break it after giving it, for whatever reason, ensure that you absolutely Hold yourself accountable to making it up and striving to ensure it does not happen again.

In the final post on Discipline, I am going to be delving further into implementation of the association switch mentioned above, and discussing specific actions you can take next, to reconfigure and reset “Mean Behavioral Patterns ” which do NOT serve you or move you powerfully towards your goals and objectives. So be on the lookout for this.

Stay empowered,

Ty.

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