Two tell-tale signs let us know when we're no longer aligned with our talents:

1) Trading becomes not fun - When we veer from personality strengths, we no longer experience gratification and fulfillment in our work. That's when we find ourselves stressed and procrastinating. Recall the key idea from the previous post: the exercise of talent brings our well-being. When trading becomes work and drudgery, we know we need to pull back and get back to what we do best.

2) Trading becomes confusing - When we lose touch with our cognitive strengths, we no longer experience a sense of understanding and mastery. We trade best when markets make sense to us, when the factors we look at align in ways we've experienced before. When we are confused, it could be the case that markets themselves are confusing: those factors aren't lining up. Often, however, our confusion reflects a shift in our processing of information. We're in the dark because we've gotten away from how we best make sense of things. That's when we know we need to step back and return to our best modes of information processing.

Viewed in this way, our experience becomes a barometer of whether we're aligned with our talents or not. The single most important thing we can do when in drawdown is reacquaint ourselves with what we were doing when we consistently made money. Find when you've been most successful and have traded best and you're most likely to find--and return to--your signature talents.