As she stood there expectantly waiting for an answer, I struggled to come to terms with the realization that, although I had focused my complete attention on trying to create wealth for more than 5 years, I had never actually made any real headway.

I looked at my daughter, and asked, ‘What makes you think we aren’t rich, darling?’

She said, ‘Because you said that if we were rich, you and mom wouldn’t have to go to work any more, and you both still work all the time. You said we could live at the beach and play in the sand every day. I want to know what you are doing about that. When can we go and live at the beach?’

Nothing like a child to cut straight to the heart of the problem – and what was I doing about it?

‘We’re not rich because daddy made some mistakes,’ I finally answered. ‘What kind of mistakes, daddy?’ she asked. ‘Well, I bought some shares that were going down and then didn’t sell them soon enough. ‘Why?’ she asked.

I had to think about that. I had no reason to buy those shares in the first place. I had no reason to hold on to them when they kept going down. Her logic was flawless – why?

I knew right then and there I had to change my strategy.

I owed it to myself and my family to finally get my act together and make some changes – that was the day the pain of not living up to my potential made me sit down and write out my trading plan and my goals…my strategy and rules – my life raft.

I started by writing out my vision – what I wanted my life to look like when I became a successful investor, then worked backwards from there – through the details of how I was going to achieve his dream.

I realized that I was afraid of losing, and that fear was just too expensive to let it control my life any longer!

I decided that I would no longer accept anything less than full compliance with my investing plan.

I decided that I would take every trade entry signal and follow my trading plan as if my life depended on it.

This certainly focused my attention on only investing in strong trends – trends where the price bars were trading above their respective moving averages for long trades, or below for short trades, and the Stock price was moving strongly in one direction.

That was the day I resolved to study a selected group of Stocks, the ones that had a track record of trending strongly, every day. I would then take every trade my system produced, put my stop loss orders in the market as I entered each trade it a place where the trend had to change to take me out of the trade, and I would hold every position until the trend changed.

I would act ‘as if’ I were a great investor, even though my record up to that point had been less than inspiring.

That innocent question from a child turned out to be the start of my successful investing career.

So now, it’s your turn. Whenever you are preparing to place a trade, find a small child, even if you have to borrow one, and ask them what the trend is. Then don’t trade the other way!

If your trading isn’t as great as you know it could be, decide to create a trading plan now that will become your life raft.

Remember, fear is just too expensive.

If you are afraid of losing money, reduce your position size until your fear goes away.

Once you have made a series of small profits, you will be trading with the markets money and you can increase you position size according to your growing confidence and account balance.

If you have a series of losses, reduce your position size again until you get back on the right track. Stick to your trading plan no matter what.