Historical review of the Olympic cultural programme

“When work, commitment, and pleasure all become one and you reach that deep well where passion lives, nothing is impossible.”

Anonymous

People passionate about trading often become exceptional traders. Passion gives them motivation and inner strength. Thanks to it one can spend hours in front of the screen, feeling neither exhaustion nor monotony.

Traders we interviewed mentioned passion and its role many times. In the following chapters you will find more information about people who are fascinated by markets, charts or indicators, people who spent many years learning. I can mention Don Steinitz who was checking the charts during an Alaskan cruise, when everyone else were enjoying the view, or Martin Bottomley, who shared an amazing thought at the end of his interview:

“I love to trade. I think I will be taking a quick look at the charts when I draw my final breath”.

When looking at these kinds of behavior from a distance, it may seem weird or eccentric, but a passionate trader would never be bothered and stay focused on what he or she truly loves.

Joe Ross mentioned how important this passion is and how easy it is to destroy it. I encourage you to protect it as it is one of our most valuable assets. It helps to overcome any obstacle, to become successful and cultivate your success.

Passion is also a tool for quick enter in the Zone, which lets your brain learn and adapt faster and more efficiently. The Zone can be entered even at the early beginning and will easily spread from learning to live trading.

This is why you should make every effort to cultivate your passion; look for people that you can share it with and do not let anything destroy it. Passion will get and keep you motivated and let you overcome any problems and obstacles.

„It is quite amazing that we have seen a pattern in our interviews – all of the traders we talked with say that passion is one of the most important things that helps them to overcome illnesses, problems in their life, tough moments.

And now you confirm that as well. So my first question is:

how to maintain this passion, avoid burning out?

The only way you can maintain this passion is if you are not constantly punished in the market. It is very hard to be in love with something that is beating you up all the time!

I would say that this passion has different stages. There is a passion in the beginning — the learning, solving the mysteries of the market. If you manage to think your way through and become successful, that gives you the love of what you do.

You would rather do that than anything else. But very few ever reach that level.

They have the beginner’s passion, the first love. But because they are repeatedly punished by the market, they become discouraged and soon lose that passion. That will happen no matter how much they like any aspect of trading. Unless people make money at it, they lose the passion. The passion comes from the reward.

There are some exceptions though. I have met ‘wannabe’

traders who study the markets. They have a great passion for

studying. They paper-trade their whole life, but never open an account.”

In order to cultivate your passion, do not expose yourself to excessively large profits or losses. Do not try to be an athlete without experience, a person who wants to run a full marathon without proper training, or a mountain climber who tries to climb Mount Everest after ten days worth of training.

Initial major losses can discourage you from trading and might make you quit. I have already described a way of learning new systems: slow and systematic start causes the fastest learning process possible.

Your learning process should take years, not days. Trading will not disappear; it will be present as long as humankind is. Later on, as an experienced trader, try to find what gives you the most pleasure, what gives freedom and the feeling of being exploratory. Look for things that have drawn you into Forex in the first place.

Currency trading provides the possibility to live a life we have always wanted. Some of the elements of this good life are joy, gratefulness for what we have achieved and passion, which gives the inner strength to move forward.

Until now, you might not have thought of passion as a valuable asset that needs cultivating. But from now on, be aware that reading inspiring books, conversations with exceptional traders and their companionship will affect you in a way you may not even have predicted.

Because passion is infectious, people who are passionate about a certain issue spread their passion around.

Passion and motivation are more important when you work and trade alone, and it is crucial when the environment in which you live does not understand what you do or even worse – it opposes it.

Until you get persistently profitable you need every support you can get. A trader from Canada I met told me that his wife was not comfortable with

his trading until he bought her a new Porsche with the money he earned on Forex. Before that very moment he had to work alone and with no support at all.