Empower Yourself with Confidence
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August 19, 2008
Mike, Colin and I had a blast in the recent Interactive Computer Trading [ICT] class in Hong Kong with 14 students, and this article is dedicated to all of those who made a critical decision (probably one of their lives'' most critical) to move up from the two-day intermediate seminar level.
In our closing ceremony, I shared with the class the story of my trading journey. Colin did the same. The reason is simple. We are not here to show off our trading success. We only want to impress upon our students that if you believe in yourself, and are committed to trading excellence, you can do it. If I may borrow one quote from my NLP mentor – “If I can do it, so can you!”
From my experience, the reason why beginners tend to procrastinate (and hence do not take any action) is that they lack confidence in themselves. Imagine 200 people sitting together in the same class and all learning the same techniques from the same instructors. Eventually, it becomes clear that some students are able to understand the materials a lot faster than the rest. Why? Is it because they are smarter than the others?
In my humble opinion, no one is the smartest on this planet. Why? It is because we are all geniuses. The challenge comes when you think you are stupid; you will settle with the fate that you are a slow learner. Moreover, you tend to accept the fact that it is perfectly fine if the others move faster than you on the learning curve. From my observation in this ICT class (yes, even in the ICT class), a few students exhibited stronger trading experience. It is partly because they have been in this business for a while even before they took up their first Optionetics two-day seminars. Another possible explanation is that they look confident in what they are doing. On the other hand, some students did not display a similar level of confidence. This is a proof, though. At the end of Day 2, I suggested to one of the students to start a trading group so that this student can continue to share and learn with the others. It is sad to say that this student’s response was “it is not possible. The rest are smarter than me. I am a slow learner … And they [the smarter traders] will not help me at all.” So, what happened? Nothing has happened.
Ironically, the stronger folks at the end of the class proposed to set up a trade discussion group. One student at the back raised his hand indicating his strong agreement with this proposal. The rest were convinced too. Guess what? Another person sitting in the front row took out his notepad and started asking people for their e-mail addresses so that he could go home and create a trading group in Facebook. You can now understand why confidence is so important because the more confident ones tend to be those who step up and take action immediately. The slightly less confident ones have their own inertia and tend to be in the procrastination mode.
When I came back to Singapore, I was delighted to see that the trading group was created in Facebook and some folks started discussion. I used to believe that the idea of creating trading group is a waste of time because people are not committed to make it a success. The success of this group in Facebook hopefully will serve as a counter-example and prove me wrong. I wish these 14 students all the best, and I hope to see some of them in the forthcoming Interactive Technical Trading class in Hong Kong in November 2008.
To access previous articles written by Jack Wong, please click here.
Jack Wong
Staff Writer and Instructor
Optionetics.com ~ Your Options Education Site
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