Take two groups of forex traders, one successful and the other, well let's just say less than successful. If you were to analyses the characteristics of the two groups, what do you think the main difference between the two sets of characteristics would be?

Whatever you do in life, including Forex trading, the one thing that will do more than anything else to make the difference between success and failure will be goal setting.

It's a simple fact that the human mind works best when it has a clear roadmap to follow and, once you set yourself a goal, you clearly mark the destination on your roadmap. But a destination by itself is not enough and the way in which you go about goal setting is vital to filling in the route to follow to reach your destination. Let's look at an example.

You might decide that you want to make a fortune as a Forex trader. Well who doesn't? But this won't help very much unless you define just what you mean by a fortune.

Goals must be measurable. Your goal has to be concrete and you must be able to measure it if you're going to be able to assess how far away from it, or close to it, you are.

So, let's say you decide to set yourself a goal of making $1,000,000 in the next year. Now you have a destination. The problem is that, since you're probably new to Forex trading, are still learning the ropes and have relatively limited capital to play with at this stage, making $1,000,000 in the next twelve months is probably not realistic.

Goals must be realistic. Whatever goal you set yourself, and in whatever walk of life, it must be within your capabilities. There's little point in deciding that you're going to win this year's US Open Golf Championship if you've never even picked up a golf club.

So, let's rethink our target and instead of $1,000,000 let's aim for say $120,000. Next we need to break this down and put some marker posts on our roadmap. This first thing that we can do is to look at our target on a monthly basis rather than an annual basis. We've now got a series of $10,000 markers. Great, let's keep going and break it down further into weekly markers of $2,500. At this point we've got something that we can examine in the light of our current experience and it's simply a matter of asking whether or not this figure is possible. Can you make $2,500 trading Forex in the next week?

Goals must be attainable. It's one thing to be capable of reaching your goal (setting a realistic goal) but you also need to have the right tools, in the right place at the right time. If you're currently making $500 a weeks then it's unlikely that you're going to turn this into $2,500 overnight so your goal would not be attainable and you need to go back to square one and start again.

Assuming however that $2,500 is attainable, then there's just one last step you need to take before you set off on your journey. You need to paint yourself a mental picture of your destination.

Although you've set yourself a goal of making $120,000 the money itself is not really what you're aiming for, it's what you can do with the money that's important. You don't do to Las Vegas because it's Las Vegas you go to see the shows and play the tables. So, having got your $120,000 what are you going to do with it? If you're going to buy a new car then paint yourself a picture of yourself driving down the coast road into the sunset with the roof down. Now you've got a goal.

Set yourself a goal that is measurable, realistic and attainable and keep the picture of your goal clearly fixed in your mind and you'll surprise just how easy it is to reach your destination.

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