Get yourself a mentor/coach, someone who has been a successful trader for a long time. Take great care choosing the mentor: his/her methods must be such that you can adapt them to your suit your personality. You get to hear of good mentors by word of mouth. The fewer number of students the mentor has, the more time/attention you will get. Have a detailed chat with the prospective mentor before signing up because you need to understand if this will be a good match; your mentor also should not accept anybody who comes their way. You must be able to trust your mentor and his/her trading ability. If you have doubts, you obviously didn't do your homework. The relationship will not work if you have the slightest doubt.
Decide how you learn best: does reading suit you or do you get more out of classroom training? If classroom training is beneficial, go to a workshop with your mentor, spend the whole day with him/her. If necessary, go to the same workshop every year to re-inforce the messages. It costs money (unless your mentor is exceptionlly altruistic), but who said training was cheap?
Work with your mentor to prepare a trading plan that gives you an edge. Trade very small, until you are consistently profitable. My mentor says on average it takes 3 years for a trader to become consistently profitable (for those that do become successful, that is, and note the word average). Stick to the trading plan day in, day out. The trading plan will evolve over time, but that's OK. It must become 'your' trading plan and not something the mentor handed out to you.
Then do the boring stuff: trade the exactly same way every day, log your trades, analyse past trades, amend the trading plan slightly to avoid mistakes and repeat the cycle. If you are not sure if a failed trade was due to a mistake, back test the hell out of the pattern/situation till you are happy. Ask your mentor.
Don't increase capital by big jumps. You may be a great trader when the total capital is £5,000, chances are you will fail if you jump straight to £50,000 because the of the fear of larger pound loss. Once you are confident with your trading plan, increase your trading capital by a little bit every month. Discuss the details with your mentor.
The first rate academic or the great sportsperson doesn't reach the top by changing their strategy/plan every month. They win by selecting a coach, a method that suits them and gives them an edge (this process takes some time and experimenting and yes, plenty of money till you are successful enough to get a sponsor) and then sticking to it, day in and day out. The top athletes go to practice at 6am everyday, rain or shine (to the same practice regime). They go to bed at 10pm every evening, they don't party on weekends and they don't steal the occasional bites of pizza. Do you think they don't like fun or partying or excitement or variety? They do, but they have their priorities set, and their coaches look after them. They also have setbacks, often long periods of setbacks, they have injuries, they sometimes lose the motivation. That's life. They and their coaches constantly check if the setbacks are due to them not sticking to the plan, or if the plan/regime has lost some of its edge, or this is just normal period of setbacks.
The successful academic and sportsperson constantly visualise themselves performing. They visualise all the different scenarios that could occur and how they would react. When a similar event occurs, they already know the answer. Visualise charts in your mind, visualise patterns, visualise difficult trading scnearios and how you would react. Visualise yourself having a long period of losses, how would you react? Visualise yourself as a master trader, full of confidence, taking or passing up trades with great poise and self-belief. A pleasant place full of lights, where you are in total control: that's your life projected forward in time.
Now think: why should it be any different for trading? Has anything superior in the world ever been achieved without the long hours spent at it, without guidance, without discipline, without setbacks and without sacrificing the excitement of variety? Has anything of worth ever been achieved overnight or in a few months?
