1/13/2011

Everyday work on your self efficacy beliefs...

(Reproduced from members site)

The most important determinant of your success in trading or in your personal life is your self efficacy beliefs.
The most important determinant of your trading success will be your self efficacy beliefs. Once that is in place your self talk will change to "hey I can do this", "hey I don't have all the answers but I am confident of finding the answers", "hey I know how to bounce back from setbacks" .
Self efficacy beliefs are task specific. So your personality is determined by hundreds of self efficacy beliefs you built throughout your life. The process of developing self efficacy beliefs is at peak when you are a child and a pre adult. For many of us in our adult life we stop actively growing (except for our weight -:) . We operate at a certain level of self efficacy beliefs and get stuck in a orbit. Unless events or life events, or opportunities force us to examine our belief we become very comfortable with them
When people attempt trading some find early success and some find early setbacks. That experience sets your self efficacy beliefs. Some people give up believing markets are too difficult or manipulated or beyond my understanding . Their self efficacy beliefs dictate their behavior.
Once your self efficacy beliefs specific to trading change you will start experiencing success. That does not mean you will not have setbacks. If you have high self efficacy you will find a method. If you don't have it, even the most profitable method will not work for you and you will keep finding faults with methods.
Self efficacy beliefs is the biggest determinant of your trading success. This is true of life as well. Your self efficacy beliefs determine your success in any domain. Unless you work on self efficacy you will find many inhibitors and will be constantly dissatisfied with any method, guides, videos, or instructions, or site. You will constantly chase new methods, new scans, new claims, new gurus, new newsletters, and so on.
The self efficacy beliefs theory is not some tin foil hat theory I coined or invented. Albert Bandura first wrote about self efficacy in 1977. His research on self efficacy is considered most influential in developing social learning theories. His work revolutionized our understanding of human behavior, destiny, character, personality, and so on. He is considered the greatest living psychologist.
Anyone who has taken a course in educational psychology or worked in training industry or in human resource field would be very familiar with Albert Bandura's work.
He defines perceived self-efficacy as people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives.
Self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave.
He postulates that self efficacy beliefs determine whether or not a certain behavior or performance will be attempted, the amount of effort an individual will contribute to the behavior and how long the behavior will be sustained when obstacles are encountered.
Every immigrant who came to this country for last hundreds of years had high self efficacy beliefs. People with high self efficacy beliefs left their poor and difficult circumstances to come to this country to find better life. All that they had when they came to this country was high self efficacy beliefs and few dollars. They had the confidence that somehow they will build a better life in the New World.
If you go to Ellis Island you will see the stories of people with high self efficacy beliefs who left poverty, famines, religious persecution, imperial regimes, and came to this country. There is an half an hour documentary they show and if you see it , it is a very emotional story of people with high self efficacy beliefs leaving their country, families, friends behind to come to this country and build a new life and new future for themselves and their next generation.
Same way self efficacy becomes very critical in learning complex skills like trading and if you want enduring edge and success.
Psychologist have found that self-efficacy beliefs help determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will be in the face of adverse situations. The higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort, persistence, and resilience.
Profitable trading involves all these challenges. You need to put in lot of effort to understand and internalize key concepts like equity selection, entries, exits, risk, risk/reward and then put it all together. In the process you will have several setbacks and false starts. If you have enhanced self efficacy beliefs you will persist in face of such adversities. If you have high sense of self efficacy beliefs then you will spend time mastering trading software, and mastering trading setups and make them work. Absent that you will abandon your effort at first hint of failure.
Learning to trade is not an easy task. It is one of the most challenging task you would handle in your life. Some are lucky and they find success instantly. For rest it is a big battle.
People with a strong sense of self efficacy beliefs approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided. They have greater intrinsic motivation. That helps them to engage for long periods in activities and helps them overcome repeated obstacles. They do not have discipline problem. You will see this in all people who achieve something beyond ordinary in their life. They are driven people. They have a high tolerance for failure. They don't have all the answers but they know somehow they will find the answers.
Sometime back I was reading a study on entrepreneurs and it says most of the fortune 500 businesses were started by people with less than 10000 dollar. What they had was high self efficacy belief.
Same is true of most successfulness traders. They started with small stake and through trial and error and persistence figured it out and then made great fortunes.
People with high self efficacy beliefs set themselves challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to them, and heighten and sustain their efforts in the face of failure. People with high self efficacy beliefs quickly recover their sense of efficacy after failures or setbacks, and attribute failure to insufficient effort or deficient knowledge and skills that are acquirable rather than external circumstances.
Your self-efficacy beliefs also influence your thought patterns and emotional reactions. This is critical in trading. You should not be overly excited by profit on single trade and same way not get depressed by loss on single trade. At the end of the day trading is probability game. High self-efficacy helps create feelings of serenity in approaching difficult tasks and activities and activities where outcome is uncertain.
If you have low self-efficacy beliefs then often you believe that things are tougher than they really are. As a result this belief that fosters anxiety, stress, depression, loss of discipline, over trading and a feeling of being lost. You are unable to solve your own trading problem.
Psychologists believe that self-efficacy beliefs influence the level of accomplishment that one ultimately achieves.Self-beliefs can also create the type of self-fulfilling prophecy in which one accomplishes what one believes one can accomplish. This further enhances self efficacy beliefs. This leads to higher performance this in turn leads to higher effort and higher accomplishment which in turn further enhances self efficacy.
The goal of this site is to constantly challenge you to enhance your self efficacy beliefs. To constantly goad you to keep working on your self efficacy beliefs. To challenge your existing beliefs. To provoke you to examine your current beliefs. To offer you a template for enhancing your self efficacy beliefs.
If you do that then you will achieve your trading goals. And you will not need this site, or alerts, or alerts with sound effect.
Everyday think of how you can enhance your trading related self efficacy beliefs.




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4 comments:

NeoRam said...

Excellent article as usual. Is there a book that talks about how to improve/develop self-efficacy?

Pradeep Bonde said...

Albert Bandura has written a book on it.

Unknown said...

There is a book by Martin Seligman called "Learned Optimiism called How to Change Your Mind and Your Life" that looks at the same thing from a different point of view.

Pradeep Bonde said...

Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control by Albert Bandura


SELF-EFFICACY: Raising the Bar for All Students by Joanne Eisenberger, Marcia Conti-D'Antonio, and Robert Bertrando

Developing Self-Regulated Learners: Beyond Achievement to Self-Efficacy by Barry J. Zimmerman, Sebastian Bonner, and Robert Kovac

Self - Efficacy in Sport: Research and strategies for working with athletes, teams, and coaches by Deborah L. Feltz, Sandra Short, and Philip Sullivan

Are some of the good books on self efficacy.