Just do the best you can – the results will follow, Trading Update, How to Sleep Less, MdeM’s Cinema Guide

just do the best you can – the results will follow

I was preparing for a talk in London last week on wealth creation, when a thought popped into my head. In trading, most people set a goal of achieving a percentage gain every week or month. For example, make 3% net on my entire portfolio be the end of next month. But this is outside of their control. This would be like setting a goal like: lose a stone by the end of next month. While this is a good goal because it is SMART goal i.e. Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and has a Time element, it might be better to focus on the behaviour that gets you there. So for example, for trading the goal for this month might be to:

1. Focus on entering the trade according to the rules every time Rules

2. Exit the trade according to the rules every time

3. Exercising good money and risk management by risking a small amount to make a large amount every time

We need to focus on what is in our sphere of control – our behaviour. After all, the market is going to do what the market is going to do and we can’t control that, but we can control each of the 3 behaviours above.

So for losing weight we can control the following behaviours:

1. Eat only one portion of healthy food each mealt-time (no sugar, sweets or carbs) every day

2. Go for a run every other day and stretch every other day or equivalent

3. Think healthy thoughts or even listen to slimming CDs (these hypnotic CDs really do work – a friend of mine is shedding pounds with them. He is doing everything else the same, this is the only new thing he is doing, so it must be the CD).

I don’t have control of the weight loss itself, but I do have control of the behaviour that will lead to the weight loss.

But here is the thought that I had – in our efforts to achieve more and quicker, we might be setting ourselves up to fail by having a list of things to be done that day, which at the end of the day may not get done through no fault of our own. If however, at the end of the day we can honestly say that we did the very best we could then this will lead to the results we desire. Goals are vital for measuring progress and direction but the every day behaviours will get you there.

Focus on the behaviour and the rest will follow. And I just love going to bed knowing that I did the best I could that day.

Trading update:

Our DAX contrarian strategy consists of seeing how far away the market goes away from the MA 20 and then entering the market in the opposite direction. For some reason DAX has been very flat since the new year and given us very few trading opportunities. When this happens, it might be an idea to move to a more volatile equivalent such as FTSE. Even more volatile is the DOW.

Tax liens update

With the one day seminar fast approaching, you should be getting my emails about this. The first teleseminar was last Thursday but there was a mix up with the time difference. The second teleseminar is this Thursday (4th February) so do what you can to get on it – this is just too good to miss.

Click here for details

How to sleep less and better

For the last few years I woke up when I wanted to because I thought that my body would let me know when it has had enough sleep. The challenge was, I was sleeping 8 hours + a day. I read an interesting article which said that if you always wake up at the same time in the morning with an alarm, then your body will take the sleep it needs because it knows it has to wake up at a certain time. It will also tell when to go to bed based on this aswell.

I have to say it really works for me. I tend to go to bed at 12:30am and wake up 7:30am and I find this is plenty of sleep. I set the alarm away from my bed so I have to get out of bed to switch it off. This is another great trick. I find that the first few seconds are the best time to get up, if I wait any longer I will get drowsy again. Try it out, it works for me and I have an extra hour a day too

Have you seen Avatar yet?

Well I have to say I really enjoyed this film, the 3 D effects at the Imax were awesome, Book of eli especially compared to the other film I watched, ‘Book of Eli’ with Denzel Washington. Avatar has that great mixture of everything: fantasy, action, bits of comedy and love interest – just check out the blue babe with the impossible body. Mix all this with a a great dinner beforehand with friends and then a big bag of Maltesers, and it just doesn’t get any better than that.

Tennis lessons

I have been struggling to go to the gym for years. I used to absolutely love it but suddenly found it boring.Tennis player My coach suggested I do something I enjoy. We looked around for rugby or football teams but due to my busy schedule I couldn’t always commit. Then in December I thought about getting tennis lessons. Wow. What a thrill. I can’t WAIT to get there. You have to think at every shot, it is full of variety, in fact each shot is different, there is a lot of competition and it is incredibly gratifying when a shot lands out of reach of your coach. Yes it is more than the gym subscription but as they say, I’m worth it!

So if you don’t like the gym but want to exercise, what can you do which will make you work out to get the fitness and energy levels required to achieve your goals.

That’s it for this week!

Marcus