Success is not final, failure is not fatal:
it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
If there's a single belief that seems almost inseparable from success, it's that there's no great success without great commitment. If you take the time to look at successful people in any field, you will find they're not necessarily the best and the brightest, the fastest and the strongest. What you will find is that they're the ones with the most commitment. "To follow, without halt, one aim: there's the secret of success" - Anna Pavlova
You see this in any field, even where natural ability would seem to have the strongest hold. What made Larry Bird one of the great basketball players? It wasn't speed, nor was it his jumping ability. He certainly was not graceful, often looking as if he were playing in slow motion. He succeeded because of a great commitment to success. He practiced harder, played harder - he simply wanted it more, and made the most of his skills. Tom Watson's (the great golfer) coach at Stanford once said he marveled at Watson, "I never saw anyone practice harder". It's the quality of the commitment that separates the good from great.
At 15 a budding actress went to a dramatic school in New York and was thrown out for a lack of talent. Somehow, she always knew she would someday make it as an actress. She didn't give up. She was committed. Her name, Lucille Ball. When she married Desi Arnaz every studio and company said that Americans would never accept a girl like Lucy being married to a Cuban. So to prove them wrong, they put on a Mr. and Mrs. Vaudeville act. They were both committed. I'm sure
you know the rest.
If you wish to be successful in the markets, first make a commitment to learn everything you can. Start building (if you haven't already) a good library, not only for learning but also for future reference. It sure would be a waste to spend your book money on donuts, don't you think? Seek out and become friends with people who are successful in the marketplace. Learn from them - ask questions. You will be surprised at their willingness to help. They may even learn from you, and they know that. Your questions may jog their memory or spark an idea.
Successful people are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. That as much as anything else separates them from the pack. Of course it goes without saying, you do whatever it takes to succeed without harming another person.
If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree.
Jim Rohn
There is no such thing as failure. There are only results. Most of us have been programmed to fear this thing called failure. Successful people do not see failure. They do not believe in it. It does not compute. Successful people are not people who do not fail, but people who know that if they try something and it does not give them what they want, they have had a learning experience. They use what they have learned and simply try something else. They take new actions and produce new results.
What is the one benefit, the one asset, you have today over yesterday? Experience! Some of you have not previously experienced a vicious bear market. Some of you, old enough, have experienced more than one bear market, and the action we see is not new. We have learned from the past, from our experiences. We do not fear the bear, but we respect him. People who fear failure make internal representations of what might not work in advance. This is what holds them back from taking the action that could ensure the accomplishment of their goals. Failure is something that is just not perceived by people who achieve. They do not dwell on it. They do not attach negative emotions to something that does not work.
"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt." William Shakespeare
Winners, in the market and elsewhere, understand that if you try something and you do not get the outcome you want it's simply feedback. You use that information to make finer distinctions next time. That's why we analyze our investments, both good ones and bad ones, to make finer distinctions on what went right and what went wrong. It's feedback for next time. We learn from our successes as well as our failures. Buckminster Fuller wrote,
"Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes."
And I might add the mistakes of others.
Take a minute to reflect on the five greatest so-called "failures" in your life. What did you learn from those experiences? Chances are they were some of the most valuable lessons you have learned in your life. Treat your trading in the same way, failures are merely feedback, lessons to be learned for finer tuning the next time.
