Interpretations that would result in a more satisfying experience

CHAPTER 4 
4 
CONSISTENCY: A STATE OF MIND 
 
I hope that after reading the first three chapters you are getting die idea that just because you are acting 
in the capacity of a trader, doesn't mean that you've learned the appropriate ways to think about what 
you do. As I have already stressed several times, what separates the best traders from everyone else is 
not what they do or when they do it, but rather how they think about what they do and how they're 
thinking when they doit. If your goal is to trade like a professional and be a consistent winner, then you 
must start from the premise that the solutions are in your mind and not in the market. Consistency is a 
state of mind diat has at its core certain fundamental thinking strategies that are unique to trading. 
Experiencing a few or more winning trades can convince almost anyone that trading is easy. Recall 
your own experiences; think back to those trades that brought a stream of money flowing into your 
account when all you had done was make a simple decision to buy or sell.
Now, combine the extremely positive feeling you get from winning and getting money with no effort, 
and it's almost impossible not to conclude that making money as a trader is easy. But if that's the case, 
if trading is so easy, then why is it so difficult to master? Why are so many traders at their wits' end, 
grappling with the obvious contradiction? If it is true that trading is easy — and traders know it is 
because they've had the direct experience of how easy and effortless it is — then how can it also be 
possible that they can't make what they've learned about the markets work for them over and over 
again? In other words, how do we account for the contradiction between what we believe about trading 
and our actual trading results over time?
THINKING ABOUT TRADING 
The answers are all in the way you think about it. The irony is that trading can be as much fun and as 
effortless as your experience of it has been on occasion; but experiencing these qualities consistently is 
a function of your perspective, your beliefs, your attitudes, or your mindset.
Choose the term you are most comfortable with; they all refer to the same thing: Winning and 
consistency are states of mind in the same way that happiness, having fun, and satisfaction are states of 

---

mind. Your state of mind is a by-product of your beliefs and attitudes. You can try to create consistency 
without having the appropriate beliefs and attitudes, but your results won't be any different than if you 
tiy to be happy when you're not having fun. When you're not having fun, it can be very difficult to 
change your perspective to one where you, all of a sudden, start enjoying yourself. Of course, the 
circumstances of your situation could suddenly shift in a way that causes you to experience joy. But 
then your state of mind would be the result of an external shift in conditions, not a result of an internal 
shift in your attitude. If you depend on outside conditions and circumstances to make you happy (so 
that you always are enjoying yourself), then it is extremely unlikely that you will experience happiness 
on a consistent basis.
However, you can greatly increase the possibility of your being happy by developing fun-type attitudes 
and, more specifically, by working on neutralizing the beliefs and attitudes that prevent you from 
having fun or enjoying yourself. Creating consistent success as a trader works the same way. You can't 
rely on the market to make you consistently successful, any more than you can rely on the outside 
world to make you consistently happy. People who are truly happy don't have to do anything in order to 
be happy.
They are happy people who do things. Traders who are consistently successful are consistent as a 
natural expression of who they are. They don't have to try to be consistent; they are consistent. This 
may seem like an abstract distinction, but it is vitally important that you understand the difference. 
Being consistent is not something you can try to be, because the very act of trying will negate your 
intent by mentally taking you out of the opportunity flow, making it less likely that you will win and 
more likely you will lose. Your veiy best trades were easy and effortless. You didn't have to try to 
make them easy; they were easy. There was no struggle. You saw exactly what you needed to see, and 
you acted on what you saw. You were in the moment, a part of the opportunity flow. When you're in 
the flow, you don't have to try, because everything you know about the market is available to you. 
Nothing is being blocked or hidden from your awareness, and your actions seem effortless because 
there's no struggle or resistance. On the other hand, having to try indicates that there is some degree of 
resistance or struggle. Otherwise, you would just be doing it and not have to try to be doing it. It also 
indicates that you're trying to get what you want from the market. While it seems natural to think this 
way, it's a perspective fraught with difficulties.
The best traders stay in the flow because they don't try to get anything from the market; they simply 
make themselves available so they can take advantage of whatever the market is offering at any given 
moment. There's a huge difference between the two perspectives.
In Chapter 3, I briefly illustrated how our minds are wired to avoid both physical and emotional pain. If 
you trade from the perspective of trying to get what you want or what you expect from the markets, 
what happens when the market doesn't behave in a way that will fulfill your expectations? Your mental 
defense mechanisms kick in to compensate for the difference between what you want and what you're 
not getting, so that you don't experience any emotional pain.

---

Our minds are designed to automatically block threatening information or find a way to obscure that 
information, in order to shield us from the emotional discomfort we naturally feel when we don't get 
what we want. You won't realize it in the moment, but you will pick and choose information that is 
consistent with what you expect, so that you can maintain a pain-free state of mind.
However, in the process of trying to maintain a pain-free state of mind, you also take yourself out of 
the opportunity flow and enter the realm of the "could have," the "should have," the "would have," and 
the "if only." Everything that you could have, should have, or would have recognized in the moment 
appeared invisible, then all becomes painfully evident after the fact, after the opportunity is long gone. 
To be consistent, you have to learn to think about trading in such a way that you're no longer 
susceptible to conscious or subconscious mental processes that cause you to obscure, block, or pick and 
choose information on the basis of what will make you happy, give you what you want, or avoid pain. 
The threat of pain generates fear, and fear is the source of 95 percent of the errors you are likely to 
make. Certainly, you can't be consistent or experience the flow if you're consistently making errors, and 
you will make errors, as long as you're afraid that what you want or what you expect won't happen. 
Furthermore, everything you attempt to do as a trader will be a struggle, and it will seem as if you are 
struggling against the market or that the market is against you personally. But, the reality is that it's all 
taking place inside your mind. The market doesn't perceive the information it makes available; you do. 
If there's a struggle, it is you who are struggling against your own TV^^oT*n 11 T-acic^onoo /">r^T-
iTlir»l-c anri r^avc
Now, you may be asking yourself, how can I think about trading in such a way that I'm no longer afraid 
and, therefore, no longer susceptible to the mental processes that cause me to block, obscure, or pick 
and choose information? The answer is: Learn to accept the risk.