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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 control your emotions you can significantly impact the success you have in the stock market. Here are seven tips you can use to help take control of your emotions when investing.

1) Create an Investment Plan and Document It
Writing down and documenting your investment plan is proven to help keep you focused and on track. In order to get what you want from your investments, your plan should include specific investment goals along with a timeframe for achieving 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) Do Contingency Planning
Always think through as many different scenarios as you can 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 easy exercise, you can dramatically decrease or stop your emotional reaction to a situation because you'll have had to think it through in advance.

3) Focus on Value Investing
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 advance planning and discipline to not only create your buy and hold prices but also to initiate them when the market fluctuates. 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 on a Regular Basis
By investing regularly, you can create an investing routine where you make decisions based upon your goals rather than outside influences. This helps to overcome the need that most inexperienced investors have to “follow the masses” and overreact. By using your plan and investing based upon your goals, it will help insulate you from market volatility.

6) Set a Limit on the Number of 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 decrease your costs and focus your energy on the long term trends.

7) Learn from Your Losses
Anytime you make any type of mistake, take time to consider what went wrong. Then write this information down and determine how you can use this information to your advantage next time. This one easy technique can help make your investing even more profitable because you'll avoid making the same mistake twice.

With these 7 tips you'll be able to map out your investment goals and keep your emotions in check so you can make your investment portfolio even more profitable.

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.

Tags: beginner stock market investing, how to invest stock market, stock market investing, stock market investing guide