Happy Endings by Adrienne Toghraie, Trader's Success Coach

The stories you tell yourself during the day or when you sleep are a powerful driver towards the direction you want to go in life and will certainly influence your trading. These stories form your beliefs, your self-values and how other people view you. So why not change the stories to have happy endings?

Turning losses into profits

Rodney was a great storyteller and happened to be a trader as well. The only problem with Rodney's stories was that there was an enormous amount of struggle that characters in his plots had to endure and almost always not to a good end. Rodney's trading mirrored his stories.

Rodney's mother Clara grew up in a family that went through difficult times. When his mother's family grew out of their struggles, Clara was still passing on stories of doom and gloom. Rodney embraced his inheritance of story telling from his mother. With this came nightmares that would haunt him all of his life.

Rodney took on the successful family business. When Rodney decided to invest the family money, he became interested in trading and proceeded to lose money when he thought he could become a trader without training. He was angry and wanted to get back at the market as if the market was the demon he had to overthrow. Fortunately, he found a good trader and became his mentor, but Rodney couldn't follow his rules.

Rodney listened to several of my webinars and finally purchased my Trading on Target Home Study Course. When I reviewed his Trader Evaluation on the phone with him, I was able to identify many of his issues. He related some stories to me when he took my seminar and I realized that one of his problems was the way he interpreted his stories.

Here are some of the instructions I gave Rodney:

* Start listening to what you are saying within your head and to others

* Make a point to start changing stories to have happy endings

* When you wake up from a nightmare, be sure to take charge of the end of the nightmare and change the story to be in your favor before you go back to sleep

* Within your mind's eye spend time during the day sending people in your life good wishes

* Write out your life the way you would like it to be for the next day, week, month, year, five years and so on

* Visualize a good life as if you are already living that life

* Notice how people start treating you differently

* Notice how you feel and the outcome you get from the actions you take

Rodney reported back to me that he felt happier and his wife and friends noticed the difference in him. He started making money in his trading.

Rodney's mother, however, was uncomfortable with the new Rodney. She wanted to bring him back to the complaining, negative person with whom she was comfortable. He reported that when he started to change the conversation, she would either find that she had something else she had to attend to, or try to bring him back to negative interaction. This observation made him more determined to work on himself, which led to working with me as a trader's coach to let go of his other self-sabotage issues.

Conclusion

The stories of your life become a reflection of the success you have in overcoming your personal self-sabotage, and the issues you have with other people, and certainly your trading. Change the stories and you change your life. Keep in mind, however, that there are many self-sabotage issues that are interrelated to the stories you have told yourself for a lifetime. Seek help when you are ready to transform your life to bring out the best in yourself, or you will keep getting the same outcome.

Adrienne Toghraie, Trader's Success Coach, coaches traders and investors to their next level of success by helping them overcome their self-imposed limitations. She has been a keynote speaker since 1989, author of 13 books, and owner of www.TradingOnTarget.com.