If you’ve ever invested in stocks, then you probably know that the market is highly dependent upon the emotional reactions of its investors. But did you know that emotions are one of the primary reasons why most investors don’t make the kind of money they want? That’s right, by learning how to better control your emotions, you can help to significantly improve the long term success you have in the stock market. Here are 7 tips you can use to help get control of your emotions when you invest.

1)  Write Down Your Investment Plan
Writing down your investment plan is a proven way to help keep you focused and on track. In order to accomplish what you want to with your investing, your plan should include investment goals, any specific portfolio objectives and a specific time frame to achieve them. You should look at your plan regularly to help keep yourself on track and prevent short term situations from distracting you from your investment goals.

2) Plan for the Worst
Always think through all of the different scenarios that could happen when it comes to your investment plan. Imagine all of the possible situations (good and bad) that could happen to your investments and write a plan of how you’ll respond. Think of it as an evacuation plan so you always know what to do when an investment crisis hits. By doing this simple exercise, you can significantly decrease or eliminate the emotional reaction you have to a situation because you’ve had to time to think it through in advance.

3) Focus on Value
If you want to decrease the chance of your emotions running rampant, focus your efforts on value investing. By focusing on value investing, you’ll help to steer clear of the herd and avoid getting sucked into the news of the next big “winner.” Value investing is a great way to help overcome the emotional roller coaster to profitable investing.

4) Always Set Limits
Setting limits on your investments can dramatically reduce your anxiety level and emotional response to the market. By including limits for both buying and selling any current or potential stock in your portfolio, you’ll make better decisions than other emotionally charged investors. This requires future planning and discipline to not only create your hold prices but also to act on them when the market changes. This disciplined action of buying and selling using pre-set limits will help to minimize your potential losses and insulate you from making bad decisions based upon emotion.

5) Invest Regularly
By investing regularly, you can create an investing routine where you make decisions based upon your goals rather than outside influences. This helps to eliminate the need that many inexperienced investors have to “follow the herd” and overreact. By using your plan and investing based upon your goals, it will help insulate you from market volatility.

6) Limit Your Transactions
Often, the more stock transactions you make, the more likely you’ll fall victim to your emotions and lose sight of your long term investment goals. The more transactions you make that are short term, the more random your decisions become and the greater the risk. By limiting your transactions you can focus on the longer term trends and decrease your costs.

7) Evaluate and Learn from Your Mistakes
Anytime you make a mistake always take time to figure out what went wrong. Then write down this information and figure out how you can use it to your advantage next time. This one simple technique can make your investing even more profitable because you’ll never repeat the same mistake twice.

With these seven important tips you’ll be able to map out your investment goals and keep your emotions under control so you can make more profitable investment decisions.

And by making more profitable investments you can spend more time and money on things you enjoy like spending time with your family, traveling and doing hobbies like taking pictures and then displaying your memories in beautiful wood picture frames. This way you’ll be reminded of the fun times so you’ll continue to stay motivated to invest.