Estimated Reading Time for “Learn To Trade”: 3 minutes
Have you ever tried to learn something, but couldn’t wrap your head around it? Maybe a language? Or a new skill?
Do you remember the times in school, or maybe even in college, when you just stared at your text book and just couldn’t understand what you were reading?
Perhaps you’ve already had this same experience when trying to learn to trade. You’ve read a book; watched videos; attended webinars and seminars; but you just don’t get it. Things aren’t sinking in and nothing makes sense!
If this has happened to you, then THIS blog post might help you. Here I will show you the fastest – and therefore probably best – way to learn to trade.
The fastest way to learn new material – whether it’s a method, a strategy, a skill or a habit – is to relate the new ideas to something you already KNOW.
Socrates said that “Learning is remembering.”
And Richard Saul Wurman says:
“Facts in themselves don’t solve the problem. Facts are only meaningful as they relate to a concept you can grasp … New ideas are not so much discovered as uncovered by moving from what you already understand into the realm of what you would like to understand.”
Source: Information Anxiety, by Richard Saul Wurman, 1989
Let me give you an example:
As you know, I moved from Germany to the U.S. in 2002, and one of my first tasks was to buy a house. It should have been no problem –after all, we do have houses in Germany. It’s basically the same process, right?
Wrong – in Germany, we measure in meters and kilometers. So, you can just imagine my confusion when my realtor started describing lot sizes in half-acre, an acre, two acres etc. What the heck? How big is an acre?
Thanks to Google and Wikipedia I quickly found out that an acre is 43,560 square feet. But that didn’t really help me. Now I knew the exact measurements, but I still couldn’t picture the exact size of “an acre” in my head. I had no frame of reference.
Then a friend of mine told me that an acre is about the size of an American football field without the end zones. And I finally got it! I understood how big an acre was, since I NOW had a frame of reference.
The same is true in trading.
In my last blog post I talked about the three areas of trading: Mind, Method and Management. It’s an abstract concept, but I related it to barbequing a brisket – something that you already know. By giving you a frame of reference it was easier for you to learn the concept of the three areas of trading.
And that’s my unique way of teaching.
If you ever attended any of my webinars or have watched the videos of The Ultimate Day Trading System to learn to trade, then you know that I frequently use references to things you already know when introducing new concepts. Some of these examples might sound goofy (e.g. when I talk about “walking over hot coals”, “how I lost 25 pounds” or “how to talk to beautiful girls”), but I promise that these references will all help you to learn to trade, since I always try to reference something that you already know.
Remember Socrates: “Learning is remembering.”
That’s it for today! In upcoming posts I will start to dig into the three areas of trading: Mind, Method and Management.
And as always: Leave a comment and let me know if this helps you.
I’m looking forward to your feedback.