Trading on Target: How to Cultivate a Winner's State of Mind

TURNING DOWN THE COMPLAINING VOLUME

Here are four effective strategies for gradually reducing the amount of complaining that you do.

Strategy #1

Listening to yourself: One of the simplest ways to stop complaining is to listen to yourself talk. Actually listen without judging or attempting to censor. Many people think that they can will themselves to stop. However, just determining that you will complain less may actually make the situation worse. You will be focusing on what not to do. Your brain does not process the word “not” so much as it creates pictures of things for goal setting. Therefore, when you tell yourself not to think about that chocolate cake, all your brain hears is “chocolate cake,” and you will simply be creating the image of it in your mind, thus making it even more real to you. When you listen to yourself as you talk, and you do it without any sense of judgment, you will actually hear what you are saying. Just like the great whining trader, Mark, who began to turn around his complaining after hearing a tape of his interview, you can create the same effect by simply listening to yourself talk.

Strategy #2

Surround yourself with noncomplainers. Remember when your parents would say, “Birds of a feather flock together?” Well, sadly, they were right about that one. A good example of this principle was a trader I worked with three years ago. John changed firms from one at which everyone complained to another where complaining was considered bad form. Within a brief ...