It’s Adrian Reid here from Enlightened Stock Trading and this week I had the really bizarre experience of being a learner after doing something for thirty years straight.

I’ve skied for a long time since I was a kid but this year, we’re in the Canadian Rockies. I decided I’d do something different so I decided to learn to snowboard, so for the first time in a long time on the snow, I was a beginner.

What was interesting was when I was, because I was learning, I got to observe a whole lot of different people learning to do the same thing that I was doing. What I found was there is four different types of people when it comes to learning something new.

The first type is the type of person who has to do it themselves.

They think basically they can figure it out on their own. They don’t need help. They don’t need a teacher or instructor, and so this sort of a person, on a snowboard, these are the people that really struggle the most. I saw a couple of people on the mountain who were trying to teach themselves and after two or three days they were still struggling to get up, still struggling to move and it was a frustrating, challenging, wet and cold experience for them.

The second type are the people who rely on someone they know.

They rely on a friend or a partner or someone they’re in a relationship with, who relies on them to teach them, so you’re using a non-professional instructor to try and learn something that’s quite complicated and difficult. These people progress quicker than the first group except there’s all sorts of tension and frustration going on in the relationship because it’s not a relationship that’s set up around teaching and learning. It’s a relationship that’s a friendship or a partnership and so trying to take that sort of relationship and learn something new that’s difficult and challenging like snowboarding or trading, is quite difficult as well.

The third type of person is someone who recognizes, at least at some level, the need for professional instruction.

On the snow, these are the people who have gone and got lessons but this third group, they haven’t gone all the way. They haven’t sold out to the process. They haven’t sold out to the instructor.

Instead, what they’ve done is they’ve gone and paid for the lessons. They’ve started and then they’ve thought to themselves, “Okay, I got the gist of this,” and then in their mind they kind of lose focus, they lose attention to the learning process, and they go off on their own thinking that they’ve heard a few tips, now they know what to do.

These people progress a little bit but quickly reach a plateau and the trouble with that, the bad thing about that, is you paid all this money and you haven’t got the full value out of the professional instruction.

The fourth and final group, which is the group that I want to encourage all of you to be in when it comes to trading or learning anything new is the group who realize the value in having a professional instructor, and they’ve sold out to the process.

The people who progress the most quickly on the mountain and similarly, the people who progress most quickly in trading are those ones who recognize the value of having a professional instructor.

They take the lessons, the buy the programs but not only that, they actually sell out to the process. They do all of the exercises. They follow through with the program. They ask the questions. They fully and actively participate.

What I saw on the mountain was that this group of people progress so quickly, after just a couple of days, they’re manoeuvring down the mountain with skill. They’ve got style. They look good and it’s exactly the same in trading.

In trading, if you try and teach yourself, it’s going to be a long, frustrating process, believe me. That’s the way I did it and I absolutely don’t recommend it for anyone.

If you try and get a buddy or a friend or a partner, or someone you’ve got a relationship with to teach you, you’re going to pick up all their bad habits. It’s going to put strain on the relationship and it’s going to be difficult.

In trading, if you pay for a professional instruction or a course, but you don’t follow through, you don’t do the activities, you don’t do all the work, you’re just not going to get the value out of it.

So it’s the fourth group, who seek professional instruction and tuition, who follow through, who sell out to the process that are most successful. This is the group that progressed the most quickly. This is the group that is going to make the most progress, make the most money, the most quickly. That’s the group that I want to encourage you to be in in 2017.

This year, sell out to the process. If you want to learn something, whether it’s trading or anything else, find the right instruction. Sell out to their process and go for it.

If you are ready to learn trading and you really want to jump into a program that’s going to take you from beginning through to active and competent trader with your own fully developed and tested stock trading system, then enter a comment in the box below and I’ll be in contact with you to help, to talk through how I might be able to help you build your own stock trading system this year so that you can get up and active in the markets.

My name’s Adrian Reid and I’m from Enlightened Stock Trading. Leave a comment in the box below if you want to learn more.