 Hello there everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Arma with the Stock Swoosh. Today I wanted to talk to you about past experiences and how you can learn from them. So I talk to a lot of people on a regular basis every week concerning trading. People have taken classes and they haven't learned enough information or people have been trading the market and losing money. Some people have been trading for years. Some people have been trading longer than I am alive and they feel very stressed out about trading in the market but yet they have a dream to trade and so they wanna pursue that dream but they're stressed out or worried that they're gonna have the same results that they've had in the past and the future. So when you are in a place where in your mind you're in fear and concern and worry you tend to not make the right decisions. You tend to over analyze things when you're in fear and you're stressed out and the best thing I can say to you is to try to put yourself in a frame of mind where you're not stressed. You know, when you think about things that you've done in the past, say whatever it is and I'm talking about trading right now but you could relate this to anything really. Say you made a mistake in a relationship. Say you made a mistake of something with your business. Say you made a mistake of something with your job. Say you made a mistake with something with one of your family members. Say you made a mistake in trading, okay? When you think about things that you did in the past that you look at right now and you look back on as a mistake, okay? Obviously at the time you made choices. You didn't think you were making a mistake at that time. The best advice I can give you is look at where you're at today. So if you look at where you're at today compared to where you were a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, 10 years ago in your life, all right? You obviously know so much more now than you did before. So the chances of you making another mistake is not as high. So you've learned from things. Give yourself credit to know you've learned from things you've done in the past where you've made mistakes. So I think where people get confused is they're so stressed out that they almost don't trust themselves. They almost don't trust themselves to do right trading, to make the correct trading decisions. They almost don't even trust the market anymore or stocks or themselves or their own even abilities, all right? To learn something new to actually be productive to be successful to do it. And I'm talking right now about trading specifically again. So if you can put yourself in a mindset where you are not stressed out and think about it rationally and say, you know what? Yes, maybe I did these things in the past, but I learned from that. And therefore I'm not going to do that again. The problem is that so many people look at the things that are not the things they should be looking at. I don't know if you know what I'm trying to say, but people say, well, I made a mistake doing, I made a mistake doing a class. No, your mistake wasn't doing a class. Your mistake may have been not understanding what you were going to get out of that class before you took it. Because a lot of times people go into classes with expectations that are completely unrealistic. For example, I talked to a gentleman this morning and he was telling me about some class that was $400. I said, if you think you're gonna take a class and learn how to trade and make money in the market with a class that costs $400, you gotta know that's not the case. Anything that's worth it, any system that's good is going to cost money. The information is valuable. And when people come and do my class, my class costs real money because it's valuable, because you're gonna learn how to trade and make money in the market and replicate that for the rest of your life. So that is something that is going to cost. And when you look back and you say, well, I made a mistake, I shouldn't have done a class. No, the mistake wasn't the class. The mistake was your expectations for what you were gonna get out of that class. Or maybe when you look back at your trading and you say, I made a mistake doing that trade. Maybe in the trade itself was not a mistake. Maybe the way you manage the trade was a mistake. Maybe your expectations for that trade were too great. Maybe you were out of money in the trade and you held on to it too long and you were greedy. So the mistake was being greedy. And very often, as I just pointed out in two examples, people's mistakes come from a place of their expectations are too great in a short timeframe that I'm not gonna say anything is unrealistic, okay? But I'm gonna say is not necessarily the case for everyone in a short timeframe. So what do I mean by that? I mean, if you decide you wanna start trading, although there are many people that can make a lot of money, very, very quickly, right out of the gate, okay? Your expectations should be that the process is you're going to do well and make a lot of money over the journey. So if you have an attitude that you are going forward with this, with your expectation of being successful and making a certain amount of money over a certain period of time, that is realistic. If your expectation is taking a very, very small amount of money with not a lot of knowledge and making a lot of money, then that expectation is not realistic. And unfortunately that's what a lot of people do. A lot of people go into the market with small amounts of money, do not have a quality system like mine, and their expectations are completely out of the water. And again, I'm not saying it's totally unrealistic that somebody couldn't just roll out of bed and be successful trading the market and be some guru. I'm not saying that's impossible. It's highly unlikely though, okay? So most of the times, if you wanna be someone that takes this seriously and you wanna be an expert and you wanna be a professional and you wanna do well with this, you have to be realistic with your expectations. What does that mean? That means you're gonna learn a skill. The skill is you're gonna learn how to trade. Learning that skill may cost you money. Learning that skill may cost you time, okay? So if you move forward and say I'm gonna begin this journey and on this journey, I'm gonna learn a skill. And it's gonna take me as long as it's gonna take to learn the skill, but I am gonna master the skill. And then once I do, I will make all the money that I wanna make and even more, all right? And so when you start to put things into better perspective, then it takes a load off on your mind and you're not so stressed out. Because so many people go into trades, situations. Again, I'm gonna go back to relationships, business relationships, personal relationships, classes, with expectations that are just totally overblown. But in hindsight, when you look back and you say, well, I made a mistake doing this and I made a mistake doing that, very often the thing that you think you made a mistake doing really wasn't the thing that you should be reconsidering in your mind. It was something else, okay? And very often it was your attitude, your expectation and then you felt down after the expectation was not met. So I tried to give people an optimistic attitude about their own ability to be able to succeed with some practicality, which is that you have to learn what I know. And it's a skill, okay? So what I do is a skill. When I get up in the morning and I see a chart and I can predict where that chart's gonna go, that is a skill, 100%. It's a skill that I have and I'm blessed. I'm blessed to have that skill. When you come and you do my class, you learn what I have in my brain that allows me to predict the stock where it's gonna go. So then you're going to learn the skill from me and that's how it all comes together. But in your mind, if you think about things you did in the past that were very, very stressful and you take it into your future, it's not gonna serve you well in life and you're gonna continue to live in that agonizing stress from the past. If you have a different perspective and you look at it differently and you go back and say, you know what? I'm not gonna be that person anymore. I'm gonna learn from that situation. And you say to yourself, I'm gonna take away the positive to move forward from whatever occurred. So the positive thing might be what? Say you weren't in a relationship and you were heartbroken. The person, it didn't work out, whatever the person broke your heart. Well, you're gonna learn from that. It doesn't mean you never have a relationship with anyone again. It never means you don't, it doesn't mean you don't ever fall in love again. And if it was a situation where you were married and got divorced, it doesn't mean you never get married again. No, no, no, no, no. That's not the lesson. The mistake wasn't getting married. The mistake wasn't falling in love, okay? You know, when you look back, maybe actually you didn't make any mistakes at all. Maybe it was something that just occurred. Random events by chance of something in a relationship that did not work out. But either way, take away the positive from what happened in that event in your life that was cataclysmic or whatever you wanna call it, stressful, a significant, in a way that you perceive to be negative that has hindered you from moving forward. Don't let it anymore. Don't let it affect you anymore in a negative and stressful way. Take away the positive from it. Take something away from it that's positive. I'm sure that there's something positive you can think of any mistake that you made even in your trading life from the past. And many times I talk to people, like I talk to this gentleman today, you know, you may have taken classes in the past that weren't worth the money. Some may have been expensive, some may have been cheap. But I'm sure you'll learn something. I'm sure you'll learn something. So take away the positive. Take away the positive from what you're thinking in your mind because otherwise what's gonna happen is you seriously, seriously, seriously will be dragged down by this negative thought processes that's not gonna serve you moving forward and you'll continue to be in that place of stress, second guessing yourself and not trusting yourself to move forward in a positive direction. I just caution people to not to have unrealistic expectations and I say that all the time but many people do. Many people believe and there are places out there and I'm not one of them but they say you can open up an account with $500 and make $100,000 in three months or even a year. That is totally, totally, totally irresponsible and unrealistic, okay? And it's the same people that are saying you can pay $400 for a class or $1,000 for a class and learn something that's gonna help you make money in the market, you know? You really have to get a good perspective of what it takes to do this. I think that anyone has a chance to be successful. I don't think everyone's cut out to trade and the reason I say that is because a lot of people are adverse to risk. But if you know yourself and you know you have an interest in trading but you're really not a risk taker, then take less risk if you wanna trade. Then don't risk $1,000 of trade. Don't risk $500 of trade. Don't risk more than you feel is totally acceptable to you to risk. Maybe it's only 50 bucks, maybe it's only $100 because if you know yourself and you know that you're afraid of taking risk, you got two choices. Either A, don't ever trade, okay? Because trading does involve risk or B, trade very small amounts of money until you start to get to know yourself, learn the system and do it and realize that actually you are willing to take risk for a system that you believe in and have conviction and a confidence and know and have the skill. And how long will that be until you know it till it takes time? And that's something I say. Some people just get it right away after the class and go full on. You know, I do the class and start it some Sundays. People right away is on a Monday. Sometimes people come right out of the gate and do amazing. Sometimes it takes people other people time, all right? Either way, the point isn't that. The point is that you're gonna start the journey. The journey is an individual journey that you yourself are gonna go on by yourself. And I'm just there to support you in the class and in the trading room, all right? So everyone's been through different experiences in their life. Everyone's had stressful situations in the past no matter where you came from. Everyone has. And anyone that's ever traded before has as well, all right? So take away the positive to move forward from those experiences and just make sure when you look back and say, well, I made a mistake. The mistake usually that you made is not what you think that you did or the lesson needed to be learned is not what you think, all right? So I know sometimes it takes work to honestly look at yourself. It's something that I'm very good at doing personally, which is one of the reasons why I am successful. I can honestly, honestly look at myself and I'm constantly, constantly doing that. But if you have trouble doing that, if you struggle doing that, talk to a loved one. If someone that cares about you and knows you really well to help you maybe look at some of those things or take some time to meditate or be on your own to think about those things are right, right in the journal. I think that's great. A journal, a diary, right? Right as if you were talking to someone but no one's listening, you write it but you're writing to yourself if you don't wanna share your thoughts and feelings with someone else. I think that's important too. You gotta get in touch with what's going on. You gotta be honest with yourself and sometimes when you're honest with yourself you may not like what you have to say to yourself but that might help you become more evolved as a human being and quite frankly if you wanna be very successful and you wanna be the most successful person that you can be on this planet you are going to have to evolve. You are gonna have to evolve to make it and that means taking an honest look at yourself, okay? So hope everyone got a lot out of this lecture and have a great day, everyone.