Everyone has ever felt fear before whether it is from their personal childhood experience or even in their adulthood experience. Such fear can induce our feeling that there is a danger coming to us and because of that, we tend to avoid what we fear. Fear itself is a normal emotion that humans have where this can prevent us from doing something harmful to us, however, at the same time, fear can also prevent us from moving forward. What I mean by preventing us from moving forward can be read below this.
Fear
Previously, I also quoted from Merriam-Webster where fear is an unpleasant emotion that is caused by awareness of danger and anticipation. It is like when we were trying to ride a bike during our childhood experience for the first time in our life, we fear falling and getting hurt if we fall from the bike because we knew nothing to ride a bike properly and it is a common feeling that we have when we try to do something we do not know for the first time. This fear is called fear of the unknown which is explained below here.
Fear Of The Unknown
We know what fear is and it is a feeling which prevents us from doing something harmful to ourselves. On the other side, fear can also prevent us from moving forward. What I mean is that sometimes fear can hinder what we want to achieve. For example, you can imagine if we stayed fearing of falling from the bike and eventually we never try to learn how to ride a bike properly and it blocks our mindset to avoid riding a bike. Eventually, we spend the rest of our life by being not able to ride a bike.
By the way, regarding the example above, I have a friend who never try to ride a bike due to fear of the unknown and when I tried to convince my friend to ride a bike, he just like "Thanks Dre but I have never ridden a bike before." and I replied it with "Why don't I teach you now?" and then he said, "Thanks for your concern Dre, however, just as I said before that I have never ridden a bike before, I have to say no due to my fear." After that, I replied again "Okay, I respect your decision.". Until now my friend is not able to ride a bike due to fear of the unknown.
Fear Of The Unknown In Correlation With Trading
Just as the example with riding a bike, trading the financial market such as the forex market is the same especially if you have this fear of the unknown which can create a mental block and form a mindset like "Oh, trading in the financial market is risky and dangerous, I have to avoid it at all cost". If you let your head have this kind of mindset, you would spend the rest of your life not knowing how to trade the financial market.
The reason behind this fear of the unknown is clearly linked to our psychological conditions such as we have a traumatic experience in the past or maybe you tried to trade the financial market before without proper knowledge which made you lose a lot of your hard-earned money from your job. Eventually, it creates fear of the financial market because you do not know how the market works, and even if you know with your unstable psychological conditions still think it is dangerous, that fear will remain there in you.
Solution To Fear Of The Unknown
Simply, the solution is that you have to embrace that fear and learn the unknown. Yep, although theoretically, the solution is easy, however, in practice is hard because we humans are emotional beings and that makes us special beings. Without emotions, we would not love anything and only see things rationally just like a robot (well I do not know if the future robot would have emotions that are artificially created to mimic humans).
I remembered in the past, I tried to separate my emotions so that I would become "the emotionless trader", however, later I just realized that the proper way is to manage my emotions positively and not to ditch the emotions that I have. I tried to understand and learn myself better, at least emotionally, so that when I have an opening position like floating loss or unrealized profit I would recognize what kind of emotions that kicks in and how can I manage those emotions so that they would not disrupt my trading plan decision. Well, the main point is to learn the unknown so that later you would know how to deal with the unknown.
Conclusion
It is okay to have fear, as a human being, fear is normal to have and this can save you from the trouble that you sense can potentially put you up in a dangerous situation such as prevent you from doing something that is out of your national laws. However, if you cannot embrace your fear of positive activities such as fear of falling from the bike because you do not know how to ride it properly, it can create a mental block where you think riding a bike is dangerous, thus you cannot ride a bike for the rest of your life until you learn how to ride it properly and the same thing can happen when it comes to trading the financial market like the forex market where you do not know how to trade properly which makes you fear of the forex market which eventually makes you not able to trade the forex market for the rest of your life until you learn how the forex market works.
Written By Andre I.
Reference
Merriam-Webster. fear. Retrieved from Merriam-Webster (Accessed 2 June 2022): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fear#:~:text=fear%20is%20the%20most%20general,aversion%20as%20well%20as%20anxiety.