The answers are all in the way you think about it. The irony is that trading can be as much fun and as effortless as your experience of it has been on occasion; but experiencing these qualities consistently is a function of your perspective, your beliefs, your attitudes, or your mindset.

Choose the term you are most comfortable with; they all refer to the same thing: Winning and consistency are states of mind in the same way that happiness, having fun, and satisfaction are states of mind. Your state of mind is a by-product of your beliefs and attitudes. You can try to create consistency

without having the appropriate beliefs and attitudes, but your results won't be any different than if you tiy to be happy when you're not having fun. When you're not having fun, it can be very difficult to change your perspective to one where you, all of a sudden, start enjoying yourself. Of course, the circumstances of your situation could suddenly shift in a way that causes you to experience joy. But then your state of mind would be the result of an external shift in conditions, not a result of an internal shift in your attitude. If you depend on outside conditions and circumstances to make you happy (so that you always are enjoying yourself), then it is extremely unlikely that you will experience happiness on a consistent basis.

However, you can greatly increase the possibility of your being happy by developing fun-type attitudes and, more specifically, by working on neutralizing the beliefs and attitudes that prevent you from having fun or enjoying yourself. Creating consistent success as a trader works the same way. You can't rely on the market to make you consistently successful, any more than you can rely on the outside world to make you consistently happy. People who are truly happy don't have to do anything in order to be happy.

They are happy people who do things. Traders who are consistently successful are consistent as a natural expression of who they are. They don't have to try to be consistent; they are consistent. This may seem like an abstract distinction, but it is vitally important that you understand the difference. Being consistent is not something you can try to be, because the very act of trying will negate your intent by mentally taking you out of the opportunity flow, making it less likely that you will win and more likely you will lose. Your veiy best trades were easy and effortless. You didn't have to try to make them easy; they were easy. There was no struggle. You saw exactly what you needed to see, and you acted on what you saw. You were in the moment, a part of the opportunity flow. When you're in the flow, you don't have to try, because everything you know about the market is available to you. Nothing is being blocked or hidden from your awareness, and your actions seem effortless because there's no struggle or resistance. On the other hand, having to try indicates that there is some degree of resistance or struggle. Otherwise, you would just be doing it and not have to try to be doing it. It also indicates that you're trying to get what you want from the market. While it seems natural to think this way, it's a perspective fraught with difficulties.

The best traders stay in the flow because they don't try to get anything from the market; they simply make themselves available so they can take advantage of whatever the market is offering at any given moment. There's a huge difference between the two perspectives.

In Chapter 3, I briefly illustrated how our minds are wired to avoid both physical and emotional pain. If you trade from the perspective of trying to get what you want or what you expect from the markets, what happens when the market doesn't behave in a way that will fulfill your expectations? Your mental defense mechanisms kick in to compensate for the difference between what you want and what you're not getting, so that you don't experience any emotional pain.

Our minds are designed to automatically block threatening information or find a way to obscure that information, in order to shield us from the emotional discomfort we naturally feel when we don't get what we want. You won't realize it in the moment, but you will pick and choose information that is consistent with what you expect, so that you can maintain a pain-free state of mind. However, in the process of trying to maintain a pain-free state of mind, you also take yourself out of the opportunity flow and enter the realm of the "could have," the "should have," the "would have," and the "if only." Everything that you could have, should have, or would have recognized in the moment appeared invisible, then all becomes painfully evident after the fact, after the opportunity is long gone. To be consistent, you have to learn to think about trading in such a way that you're no longer susceptible to conscious or subconscious mental processes that cause you to obscure, block, or pick and choose information on the basis of what will make you happy, give you what you want, or avoid pain. The threat of pain generates fear, and fear is the source of 95 percent of the errors you are likely to make. Certainly, you can't be consistent or experience the flow if you're consistently making errors, and you will make errors, as long as you're afraid that what you want or what you expect won't happen. Furthermore, everything you attempt to do as a trader will be a struggle, and it will seem as if you are struggling against the market or that the market is against you personally. But, the reality is that it's all taking place inside your mind. The market doesn't perceive the information it makes available; you do.

Now, you may be asking yourself, how can I think about trading in such a way that I'm no longer afraid and, therefore, no longer susceptible to the mental processes that cause me to block, obscure, or pick and choose information? The answer is: Learn to accept the risk.