Curtis Faith speaks

"Turtles do not care about being right. They care about making money. Turtles do not pretend to be able to predict the future. They never look at markets and say: "Gold is going up". They look at the future as unknowable in specifics but forseeable in character. In other words, it is impossible to know whether a trend will stop now or in two months. You do know that there will be trends and that the character of price movement will not change because human emotion and cognition will not change.

It turns out that it is much easier to make money when you are wrong most of the time. If your trades are losers most of the time, it shows that you are not trying to predict the future. For this reason, you no longer care about the outcome of any particular trade since you expect that trade to lose money....It does not matter what happens with any particular trade. If you have 10 losing trades in a row and you are sticking to your plan, you are trading well; you are just having a bit of bad luck".

The above thoughts come from Curtis Faith's book Way of the Turtle, which is another good resource if you are interested in a systematic or rules-based trend following approach.

What the above again emphasises is that, providing you are using a system that has an overall positive expectancy, and you are using appropriate risk control, you are able to focus on the process rather than the outcome, which you cannot control. It allows you to place trades (that match your entry rules and criteria) without fear, and to have the "emotional indifference" (to quote Larry Hite) to let that trade play out without any thoughts of interference or self sabotage.

You are also not tieing yourself or your positions to some theory or prediction - you are letting price and its movement dictate when you will be exiting the trade.

The more I talk to other traders, the more I believe that having the requisite mindset and risk control are bound together. Without having one, you cannot have the other, as you will be prone to override your rules.

I have also proved this myself over a number of years. I have been able to generate profits using my method, despite being wrong more than 50% of the time. Despite this, and by having no expectation that the next trade I place will be a winning one, I am able to let my trades and strategy play itself out.