In my life as a trader and trading psychology coach I have come across many seasoned traders who believe that first and foremost they need to work on their trading system to improve trading results.

The talk often goes like this: If I could enter the trade a few ticks earlier my stops would be X instead of Y. or maybe I should alter the parameters of the bollinger bands, the ADX or worse still, add yet another indicator.

Anyone who has been trading for years knows that all these considerations are nonsense. In the final analysis there is only one thing that makes you a better trader and that is improving your relationship with yourself.

Most traders don't get this simple wisdom

Yes, it is sadly true. The sheer irony is this: We spend 24 hours with ourselves every day, month and year until death do us part. Yet we don't get it. We insist on looking outside of ourselves to improve.

If only I could make you see the total insanity of this premise and thus give you the impetus to look elsewhere, namely inside yourself; this article will have achieved its purpose.

So, why is it so difficult for us to be on intimate terms with ourselves? The reason is to do with our conditioning which has formed our believes and views of ourselves and our world. The idea of focusing on the self is viewed as ego-centric, selfish and regarded as an act of unsocial behaviour with a capital U. Truth is though, that in order to do good things, including good trades you absolutely need the ability to be in tune with yourself. In other words, you must be friends with you, accept you, know you and be comfortable with you.

Consider this:

How can you love anyone if you cannot love the person from whom love, creativity flows, which is YOU. How can you possibly return consistent trading results when the person pulling the trigger is at odds with him or herself, self doubting them, second guessing trading decisions and wondering if they made the right trading decision once they are in the trade and berading themselves when the trade goes against them.

This kind of behaviour typically stems from huge incongruencies with yourself. The challenge is to first notice the issues for what they are and then dealing with them. In coaching sessions I show traders where their thoughts are causing incongruent feelings and emotions which lead to poor trading decisions.

It is a fact that when you are hanging on to your old thoughts feelings and emotions and those old points of view which you insist upon being the only possible truth, you are out of touch with yourself. Separation begets separation. It causes dysfunctional behaviours, like impulse trading, anger, hesitant trading and fear of losing. All core human emotions.

Note when you are unable to "be like water", because any insistence on your point of view is a tell tale sign that there is something in your conditioning, or shall we call it programming, which needs to be neutralised.