Goal setting in trading and investing, and indeed in any area of your life, has two vital items involved in goal setting and goal attainment: i) perceived difficulty of the goal; and ii) how specific your goal is.

The more perceived difficulty in the goal and more specific the goal is, the more likely you will raise your level of performance to achieve your goal. This is because with these two elements of challenge and focus, people are more likely to try harder, achieving a higher performance which produces better 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.

But your goal has to be realistic to be achievable. You need to believe your goal is attainable through your past experience, knowledge, training and/or skills that you can make it happen. So to perform against your goal make it realistic.

So that is the setting of your trading goal. What about along the way…on the journey to achieving the goal? You will be most committed to achieving a goal when you believe that achieving the goal is important. Also when you can see that progress is being made towards achieving the goal, you get the best 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.

Most people who start trading shares or investing in shares do not have goals. When asked about what their trading goals are, they don’t know and they don’t worry about it. The most common response is “to make some money”. This is neither specific nor difficult nor does it have a big “Why is this goal important” nor is it measurable.

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.

Learn more about how to trade shares with Just Shares and visit our website where you can find out all about Just Shares’ share trading course and how Just Shares can help you be successful in trading shares.