Johnny,
Awesome post man. I definiltely have Trading in the zone on my to reread list. Struggled with it the first time, but ready to give it another go. I agree with every point your making. I do come to the market to fight. My latest post shows me taking entries based on what I want the market to do. I need to go with the flow. The A1 Setups/Winning trades are so obvious when you see them. I need to wait for the obvious trades, that is going to be my key to success. If they aren't there for that particular day, then I need to learn to walk away. I don't need to go and try and extract money from the market if its not there. I will not win, and the market will eat me up like it has been. Its ok to have a day without trading and its ok to have a red day.
I have seen some progress just by working on my bad habits. A month or so ago, I would let my losers break stop loss and let them run in hopes of coming back and also doubling down on my losers. I had a hard time with that for a while and I couldn't really keep it under control by myself. I implemented DAS risk controls to stop me out if my trade ever gets to $90. This was a number I knew I never should be hitting unless a stock really goes against me and I let it. It took me a few days, but I stopped doubling down on losers and stopped letting my losers run as well since there was no point. The most likely outcome when letting my losers run will be to be stopped out with a $90 loss and it would be totally out of my control. I still have the risk controls in place, but I exit trades properaly and usually at around $15-$20 and I no longer have the urge to double down at all. When something goes against me, I don't take the wait and see approach and maybe add to my position, I exit.
As far as me being addicted to action, that is one of the harder things for me to deal with. I think I do a fairly good job on most days, being patient and waiting for a good trade for the first trade of the day. It is after that point when I can lose control. I will take chop and I will take bad entries across the board. I am working on walking away after my first 2 trades for 5 min and then coming back to reread my premarket journal entry before I trade again. I need to almost take a full reset to make sure that I am in a good state of mind to continue trading. And this happens whether the first trade is good or bad. Its going to be daily thing for me. Fixing this will be the next stop to me trading consistently well.