What are Seven Key Areas that You Need to Work on to Become More Self-Aware? In my work with traders and investors I believe the most significant work that anyone can do to increase market returns is self work. Really understanding yourself and how you think can give you an edge that others in the market don't have.

As part of my Super Trader Program, I give a long questionnaire to each trader to do an evaluation of themselves. Some of the feedback that I get is that taking the test is like doing a Ph.D. program! It's that involved.

I consider the ten questions that I give my Super Traders to be the essence of this self-evaluation process— a minimum starting point for this type of work.

The psychological aspect of trading is usually underestimated by those new to trading. The psychological problem for most traders is the fear of losing - ironically it is this fear that causes most traders to lose money in the long run. The fear of losing can manifest itself in a number of ways:

Unable to pull the trigger and enter a trade.

It is my belief that successful trading is a function of:

• A written trading plan with an edge
• Effective Money Management and
• Winning Psychology

In this essay I shall:

• Identify the essential element of winning psychology.
• Identify the personal attributes required.
• Show the belief structure necessary to achieve and maintain essential element.
• Identify the blocks to winning psychology, and
• Mention some tools I found useful in this context.

Consider the following situation:

Two groups of subjects in a psychology experiment are asked to memorize those words in a list that begin with vowels.  The vowel words are exactly the same for the two groups.  The consonant words given to the first group include such terms as "difficult", "confusing", and "bad".  The second group receives a different group of consonant words, such as "excellent", "easy", and "simple".  After the experiment, the second group reports feeling in a much better mood than the first, but cannot explain why.

The Single Most Important Step You Can Take

A chess player analyzing the board for the next move; fighter pilots maneuvering their planes to get a lock on enemy aircraft; a baseball player tracking the release of the ball from the pitcher’s arm; ballet dancers executing their leaps; an oncologist diagnosing a rare form of cancer; a bodybuilder sculpting a small muscle group to achieve symmetry: all of these are examples of performance activities. They are also examples of fields that have been widely researched in the past two decades, uncovering important clues as to the factors that create successful performance.