Traders' Remorse

Often when mistakes are made, there is always a tendency to dwell upon them, to regret them, or to loath them. This is how many people instinctively respond to mistakes, however this shouldn’t be how you respond to mistakes.

Regretting your mistakes will diminish your self-confidence and your creative self-expression. It will affect your performance and productivity, and make you feel absolutely miserable. Moreover, when you regret your mistakes this can trigger the habits of procrastination and perfectionism, as well as a plethora of emotions such as anger, stress, worry, fear and frustration. This is certainly no way to live. And considering that mistakes are actually a positive and transformative force in your life, you can see how many people have it all wrong.

More often than not, when you make a mistake, psychologically the best thing for you to do is to admit that you made the mistake and take full responsibility for resolving things. This will also give you peace of mind.

If you made a mistake, be responsible for fixing things and learning from your experience so that you can do better next time. This is how things should be. However, often people won’t admit their mistakes, and they certainly won’t learn from their experience. And as a result they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again until critical lessons are finally learned.

As Paul Tudor Jones, the legendary trader, says "Failure was a key element to my life's journey".