What’s the best way to go about setting your trading or investing goals? Well, as with most goal setting in your life it involves two important elements: perceived difficulty, and how specific you are in stating your goal. These two elements play an important part in attaining your goals.

The more difficult a goal is to achieve and the more specific the goal is, the more likely you are to raise your performance level to achieve the goal. Now, this doesn’t mean that you will automatically achieve the goal because it is difficult and specific, it means that with these two elements in place you are more likely to produce high performance which in turn will produce the best overall results.

So with a trading/investing goal example to earn $50,000 for the year, a more difficult and specific goal may be $51,600. If your brain perceives $51,600 yearly earning as a more specific goal than $50,000 yearly earning then you are more likely to raise your performance to achieve your goal of $51,600.

Setting easy goals is unlikely to raise your performance as if you set a difficult but specific goal. So if you believed that a trading goal to earn $51,600 is easily attainable for the year, and then maybe set it to a more challenging $72,400.

Don’t be unrealistic though, as you are more likely to perform if you believe you can achieve your goal. Base your goal on your knowledge, training, skills and past experiences. If you know it can happen, that you can make it happen, then your performance can increase.

If you believe that achieving your goal is important you will be more committed to making it happen. If you can measure how you are progressing towards your goal, then you can measure how well you are performing. This serve to strengthen your commitment to attaining your goal and progress results.

You can measure your progress against your trading/investing goal simply by keeping a running tally of your earnings year to date. So when you are half way through the year and have an earning tally of $38,100 from your goal of $72,400 you know you are on track as you are over half way there.

Often when starting something new, we don’t bother to set goals. When starting in trading and investing, often it is good just to see a result. But imagine how much more meaningful this would be if the result reflected a set goal which was difficult, specific and important. We would be able to measure our progress which would add to our performance in achieving the goal at hand. Very satisfying and very positive.

Think about your trading goals. Set yourself some specific, difficult and measurable trading goals and understand why you want to achieve them. Then start measuring your progress.

In his excellent text book “The Psychology of Persuasion”, Kevin Hogan talks about “the least acceptable result”. What is your LEAST ACCEPTABLE RESULT from your trading? Think about this very carefully because this is the true goal that most people WILL achieve from any activity. You must move your Least Acceptable Result up to the level of your goal.

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