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It was a great day today as I attended a business networking event in town. It’s been a while since I last mingled with such a large crowd of entrepreneurs, not only did it lifted my spirit, it also reminded me of the great things of being an entrepreneur. Another thing that the event showed me was the importance of having a support group. Although I was chatting with various people with a wide variety of experiences and expertise, the one thing that they had in common was (1) Energy and (2) the spirit To Support (each other). Mind you, many of them are self-employed individuals and, to a certain extent, that is indifferent to Market Traders. I want to translate some of the benefits I took away today back into the trading world and, hopefully, you too can understand the importance of having a good traders’ support group. More importantly, I can convince you to set up your own support group too. 1. Keeps You Going Do you remember a time when you signed up for a course (be it trading, religious or business course), you were fully enthusiastic about it (at that point) but then found yourself gradually moving away from it after several months or years. Then one day, you attended a refreshers’ course and all those learning and lessons just came rushing back to you. More importantly, you had that refreshed motivation and energy to continue with what you learnt. If you have had that experience in the past, then you’ll understand that old memories can help reignite original inspiration and drive. And these memories can be retrieved when meeting a certain someone or a specific group of people. Hopefully you can see where I’m heading to on this and, YES, it is the same when meeting up with a group of traders – especially if you were trained from the same school. Meeting up with a group of traders is one of the best ways to remind us that trading IS GREAT. On top of that, some traders like to brag about how well they did on that trader or this trade etc. While it might not be obvious, listening to success stories from other traders is also a source of motivation. 2. It Takes Time to Get it Moving  As they say, two minds are greater than one. And three are greater than two. In theory, sharing and solving a trader’s problem should be easy when there are two or three traders in the same room. You’re probably nodding in agreement. Sorry to say, the honest truth is this – many traders seem to have issues sharing their personal trading problems with others. This could be due to ego, pride or anything thing along those lines. However, their egos (and any similar resistance) usually subside as soon as someone starts talking about their not-so-great experiences. That's the trigger for another trader to follow and, before you know it, everyone starts to open up their problems. The point I’m trying to make is this, it’s great to share your trading problems with other traders so that you can challenge each other and help each other grow. However, it usually takes a considerable amount of time for traders to open themselves up and to become comfortable with each other. Hence, to benefit from this arrangement or synergy, it is wise to start the support group as early as possible. And if you don’t already have a group, I think the best time to do it is NOW. 3. Reinforcing Your Believes Give your mind an inspiring word or phrase like "The Magic of Belief" and it will probably make you feel good immediately on a conscious level. But the magic comes as it goes into your subconscious and privately works wonders, affecting your thinking, your outlook and your very self. A fabulous way to feed your subconscious mind is through affirmations and the simple fact of just talking about it. Well… wonder where would be a great place to talk about the possibilities of trading with little or no resistance? Yup, you guessed it right. You can do that by talking to another trader or a group of traders. Do you realise what I’m trying to say? When a bunch of traders get together to talk about trading, they are pretty much reinforcing their own trading beliefs as well as the beliefs of people around them? As they are doing that, they are feeding their own unconscious mind too. In case you’re not aware, building good and solid trading believes as well as strong self-beliefs is a fantastic stepping stone to becoming a successful trader (as mentioned in my free ebook). If you are struggling to increase these beliefs through working by yourself, then you should seriously consider setting up a support group or network of traders to achieve that. 4. The Power of Sharing  For those of you who think that you are better traders than others and you only want to work with better traders (compared to yourself), please reconsider this carefully. From personal experience, do not underestimate the power of sharing information, especially among groups of traders. In case you’re not aware, when a group of traders share their experiences – especially if they have varied experiences and skills – it makes learning incredibly powerful. This applies for both experienced and inexperienced traders. How? Well, think about it, when experienced traders help educate or share their trading experience, they need to consciously choose and share information that is useful and beneficial only. In other words, the experienced traders need to organise their thoughts/memories and that process indirectly forces the trader to learn from his/her own experience. Without realising it, the unconscious mind is pulling out unused memories before it converts them into words. Often, it is through these types of processes where you remember old lessons and realise that you actually know much more (than you realised). On the other hand, the inexperience traders are learning new information just by absorbing these experiences. And this is a simple example of a win-win situation. Conclusion While I’m self employed and I work on my own most of the time, I am a big believer of creating synergy through group discussions and sharing sessions. Of course, I’m not inviting you to go all out to share everything with the whole world. However, do make a conscious effort to form a support group. The benefits are obvious yet many traders don’t do it. This is especially useful because, being a market trader, it can be somewhat lonely. Also, sometimes, things just become somewhat clearer when you have an extra pair of eyes working on the same issue. Anyway, hope you enjoyed today’s article and have a good weekend.
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