[IMPORTANT!  Schedule a time to actually go through these steps and DO THEM]

Brian here and I hope your week is going well!

Thought I’d share my process for preparing for the new year, so you can use it too

Five simple steps to make 2023 your best year yet

1.  Decide & Commit

First thing that has to happen is you have to make the decision that you’re not going to just keep on with more of the same

Regardless of how bad or good 2022 went, you want 2023 to be better

Much better

Just saying it won’t do

You have to decide, deep down and for real, decide that this is what you want

Then make the commitment, to yourself and to your loved ones if you wish

2.  Get clear on what “the best year yet” looks like for you

The best you can, get a clear picture of what your life looks like when you get your trading where you want it to be, such as

• How much money is your trading producing on a monthly basis?
  
  If you’re currently not profitable, what do you want to get it to, by say, April 1 (Q2) or July 1 (Q3)?  How much do you want to be profiting by then?
  
  
• What kind of schedule are you keeping regarding your trading?
  
  If you are currently putting in 8 hours a day, 7 hours trading and then an hour in the evening going over your trades, is that what you really want?
  
  Or would you ideally be just trading in the morning and done by lunch?
  
  
• How do you want to your non-trading time to be filled?  Golfing?  Personal interests?  Relaxing?  Traveling?
  
  What do your days look like?
  
  Where are you going to take your vacations?

3.  Get as clear as you can on who you need to become to experience your best year yet

Odd as that might sound, it’s very worthwhile

Here’s one of my favorite quotes – I even keep it framed on my office wall

“Success is an inside job. Everything that’s got you to this point – everything that brought you here – brought you here for a reason. We need to learn to love it and appreciate it.

The person who got you to where you are right now is not the same person who’s going to take you to the next level. That person is completely different. And this rings true for every level as you move up.

Every level is completely different from the last one, and you’re going to need to be a different person to get there.

This is what I’m trying to get at – you must continually let go of who you have been, in order to serve who are you are becoming.”

A good way to approach this comes from one of my adopted mentors

Who you are at any given time in your life, particularly professionally, can be described in terms of skills and know-how, traits and beliefs

• What skills and know-how will you need that you currently LACK that would make your ideal days possible?
  
  For example, do you currently know how to determine the root cause of the problem when your trading is not performing up to expectations, and put an effective solution in place?
  
  If you’re having trouble sticking to your system, do you know how to get your execution where it should be so you’re not missing out on profits from hesitating to get in or getting out too early, or chasing trades you shouldn’t?
  
  If you’re considering a new strategy or system, do you know how to deploy it safely and in a manner that ensures your success or at least keeps you from losing money with it if it isn’t what was claimed?
  
  
• What traits will you need that you currently lack?
  
  Will you need to have more patience?
  
  Will you need to have more persistence?
  
  Do you need to have more discipline – not so much in the day-to-day trades – but discipline in simply following through on the things that you set forth for yourself to do? 
  
  We’re talking about the trait of integrity and integrity meaning that  you do what you say you’re gonna do, building that trust so that you know you can trust yourself that if you do set an intention that you’ll follow through with it.
  
  I’d heard recently that one of the reasons people struggle with procrastination or with achieving their goals is that they don’t trust themselves because it’s happened too many times where they said they would do something and they didn’t follow through with it.
  
  That’s after a while. It’s like, you know, you almost get to where you don’t trust yourself to do what you say you’re gonna do anymore. That’s what you need to do. 
  
  For that, you need to just plain establish some small wins, where you set an attention and follow through with it, but make sure that it is something that you’re actually gonna follow through with so that you have that win.
  
  And on the trait of patience, this is something where you need to put a process in place so that you get yourself in the right mindset to be patient and mind how you talk to yourself. Are you being supportive of yourself? Do you look for instances where you showed good patience so that you can learn to understand that you do have patience.
  
  It’s not a do you have it or do you don’t, but it’s a spectrum. So how can you become a more patient person? How can you trust yourself more? 
  
  Same thing goes with the other traits.
  
  
• What beliefs will you need to hold that you currently don’t?
  
  Have you been trading long enough and with so much adversity and failure with the trading, with enough bad situations, bad days that maybe your belief that it can even happen has become hurt or even crushed.
  
  That’s something that really happens with traders.  If you’ve been at it for 3, 4, 5, you know, 6, 7, 8 years and it’s still not there, it can just become of an underlying belief that it’s like, “Wow, it just doesn’t matter what I do, just plain, I’m not gonna get there.”
  
  And that’s kind of an underlying belief. Do you believe that it’s even possible for you to make it as a trader? Does anybody make it as a trader? I’ve seen that on plenty of forums and chats where if somebody’s throwing that question out there, “Is there anybody even making money trading?”
  
  And so those are the kind of beliefs that can hold you back and they need to be replace with beliefs that a successful trader holds.
  
  What kind of beliefs will you need to hold that you currently don’t, like “This IS possible, and this is possible for me.”  What other, what other kinds of beliefs? It’s worthwhile to explore. When you think about success in trading, what kind of thoughts come up?
  
  Do you have any negative thoughts that come up? Are those negative beliefs? Maybe they only surface when you ask the question. So it’s good to do that.

4.  Get as clear as you can on what you’ll need to DO differently than you have in the past, so that you get the results that you want and NOT more of the same

So, you’ve probably heard the saying, or the cycle “Be-Do-Have”.  If not, then welcome to the game.

It puts for the notion that in order to have what you want to have, you must do what you need to do, and before you can do what you need to effectively, you must become the person you need to be.

We just looked at the traits of who you need to become.  So the next step here is “What do you need to do differently than what you have been doing?  What kind of things do you need to stop doing that have possibly, you know, been holding you back?”

These can be actions or maybe not just physical actions, but internal things such as your morning routines and your evening routines, and of course things you’re doing during the day with your trading.

So take a look at the things that you’ve been doing and look at them and see what’s been helpful, and what hasn’t decide to do more of what has been helpful and eliminate or reduce what isn’t helpful.

And then also look at what am I NOT doing that I need to?  For example, for a lot of traders getting outside help, hiring a coach.

A lot of people that get into trading have never been anything but an employee all their lives.  Their entire adult life, they’ve been an employee and they’ve always only had their own efforts and abilities to rely on. They’ve out of necessity been a Do-It-Yourselfer and forced to make due without resources or somebody they can go look to for help.

So perhaps instead of just deciding that you’re gonna tackle it by yourself, you decide to get the help that you need. And, you know, that means okay, yeah, it’s a risk to go and hire somebody. There are a lot of shysters out there, a lot of people that’d be more than happy to charge you $5, 10, or even $20,000, and they really don’t know what they’re doing and they don’t care.

I’ve spent well over $10,000 on coaches that turned out to be a total bust and a complete waste of time. I’ve also been able to find coaches and mentors that were tremendously helpful. The main thing is, as far as getting help, this is one of the big things on the do list, getting outside help.

This is because when you’re not where you want to be, you can’t see what you can’t see, you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t know what to, what you need to focus on.

Having that outside perspective from somebody who’s already made it,  that’s huge. So really all you need to do is decide that you are going to go ahead and invest in yourself because it is an investment in yourself when you hire a coach because you’re looking to make yourself better, a more competent and and capable trader.

How to do this?  You need to look for a coach that when you check ’em out on YouTube or you go to their site, they seem legitimate, that what they have to say resonates with how you think and that have what you’re looking for, what you think you need right now.

Then you go ahead and schedule a call with them and talk to ’em.

Decide that, yeah, if this is gonna be something that gets your trading, producing the way it should be, and  if you’re trading with say, a $25,000 account, for your trading to be producing, $10,000 to $30,000 a year is absolutely reasonable.

And so investing $3,000, $5,000 maybe even $10,000 depending, again, on the size of your account and how quickly you want to get there, this may be a really excellent investment because if it helps you become who you need to be and gives you the skills and the guidance and the direction that you need to be, to have your trading producing the way you want, it’s a good investment in yourself.

And so if you have any hangups about it, get over that and understand that, yes,it’s absolutely possible that you may hire a coach and they’re not perfect or they don’t give you everything that you need, BUT if they provide you value and they move you toward your goal, then yes, it’s worthwhile again because you’re investing in yourself and everything that you gain, you gain for life.

Okay, so that’s on the the do list. .

5.  Put them on your calendar

The fifth thing that you really need to do to make 2023 the best year yet is take all these things that we’ve been doing in this exercise so far, and put the action items on a calendar with a time, date, and place that you’ll take the actions necessary

That means, yes, you’re going to schedule a date when you’re going to start researching coaches, you’re going to schedule the personal work on a weekly basis. You’re going to schedule a date to actually go ahead and have a coach hired by

Schedule your goals that we talked about at the beginning, like when do you want to be making that level of money? When do you want to have your hours in hand? Put these things on your calendar.

One thing that’s really crucial with for making things happen is you don’t just  write down the objective – you schedule it.

You say, all right, here’s what I want to accomplish by this date.

For example, “By the weekend of January 21st, I’m going to have hired a coach to get my trading in order.”

Put your goals, milestones and actions on your calendar so that you’ll actually follow through because if it’s just written down and set aside, it’s probably never going to happen.

You probably heard it elsewhere, but again still true,

“A goal without a date is just a dream.”

If you do the things that we’ve listed in this exercise, 2023 will be your best year yet and you will be absolutely thrilled with it.

I hope this has been helpful.

If you have any questions, if you want to talk about this, you can use the link below to schedule a call with me, and we’ll talk about your situation.

Click here to take the first step for making 2023 your best year yet

I’ll help you walk through this process and I’ll help you go through this exercise and we’ll put together a plan on how to get you where you want to be.

To your success!

Cheers

Brian McAboy
“The Consistency Coach”

P.S.  If your trading hasn’t gone as you’d like in 2022 and you want 2023 to be significantly better, then right now is the best time to do something about it

Two things for you to do right now1.  Schedule a time on your calendar when you can take 30-60 minutes to do the exercises above. 

Your success in 2023 is worth taking a few minutes for something like this, isn’t it?

2.  Click here to pick a time that works to have me help you put together your plan