I am not quitting. Let's make that clear from the start. You might notice in this update that it shows a withdrawl of £250. That's because at this specific moment in time, trading is beating me. Well, it's not so much trading that's beating me, as it is, me, that's beating me. In particular my mindset.
When I started trading two years ago I was like nearly every other noob in as much as I thought it would be the golden pathway to lead me out of my shitty unfulfilling life and into a shiny new one. But as with nearly every noob, the harsh reality of trading soon whipped that rug from beneath my feet. As time has gone on, I've made changes in my life, good changes with regards to physical health and nutritional health, but not so much mental health. From day one I had unrealistic expectations and these lead to me putting way too much pressure on myself to win win win. This is not the reality of trading. No one wins all the time. This lead to me getting down, not just with the way my trading was progressing, but with my life. The other day I was informed that I have been in my current job for 20 years. 20 miserable years. What a fucking waste of life. It breaks my fucking heart to think about that wasted time, yet, I still cannot stop wasting more. Like most, I get sucked into the various Social Media rabbit holes and lose time. I half heartedly commit to making changes which don't stick. I lapse back into old habits no matter how shit they make me feel, because that's what your brain does. Its job is to protect you from pain, both physical and mental, but it does so in a perverse kind of way. You see, even if you're not happy with your life and your choices, they're familiar to your subconscious. They're comfortable, no matter how self destructive they may ultimately be. This familiarity, this comfort, to your subconscious brain at least is safe. And safety is what it seeks, even if in this safety there is misery. That misery is displayed in our conscious mind through our unhappiness with our situation, but, our conscious mind has no control over its brother, the subconscious.
This leads me onto something else. A digression yes, but nonetheless an important one. Beliefs. Our every day choices are governed by our beliefs, be they negative, as they so often are, or positive and beliefs are simply repeated thoughts. These beliefs guide in silent stealth, our actions. We might not even be aware of them. In fact, we are usually oblivious to them until we try and change them. And this is what I have tried to do in the past, but as with everything I seem to do, I am very good at starting, but I never finish (that right there is a prime example of a negative belief). Every day I feel frustrated with myself for one reason or another, and this frustration is magnified considerably when I have a losing morning trading. Then all the negative beliefs line up to slap me around the face. 'Of course you lost, you'll never be a profitable trader.' 'Of course it reversed as soon as you got in, why would it not?' 'What's the fucking point, you'll never have the life you want.' 'You're a loser in life so why would trading be any different?' This leads to very negative self talk of which there is no compassion shown, at all! So as you can see, I don't have the right mindset for life let alone for trading.
It was after another losing day this week that I decided, with a heavy heart that enough was enough. I said out loud to myself 'I am not fucking losing it all.' So I decided there and then that I was going to take out £250 and leave myself with just over £100 with which to trade. It almost seems pointless and I can hear the masses telling me to not bother as that will soon be gone, but, of all the imagined negative things I think I am in life, I am not a victim and I am not a quitter, but I am a realist. If I keep going the way I am, I will lose my deposit, and that might just do enough damage that I can't recover from it. So at the moment I am working on changing my beliefs. Yes, I've tried this before and not followed through on it, but this feels different. This moment in my life is my rockbottom. I'm not homeless. I have a reasonably well paying job. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not a drug addict, so it's not what would be considered rockbottom in the traditional sense, but as I said, it feels like it's my rockbottom. And that is all that matters to me. So with this in mind I am also changing my trading strategy and how I approach trading.
My current strategy works. In certain markets. In others, it fails, sometimes quite badly. I have always been of the belief that how you trade, like most other things in life, needs not to be complicated in order to be successful. A market is either trending, or ranging. That's it. So it figures that you need one strategy for each. However I didn't practice what I'm preaching. I only traded one way, so when the market was ranging I was getting whipsawed in and out of trades and had no way to FTS which lead to big loses. This is where scalping comes in. I have my own way of scalping which involves certain criteria to be met and has its own entry, exit, and stop loss rules. Add to this, I am now also much more patient. If I miss a move, I miss a move. Nothing bad has happened. I haven't lost anything, and due to the nature of the markets, that they are in a constant state of flux, there will always be other moves. This I feel is the most important realisation with regards to my new style of trading. It is also the hardest to apply as FOMO is a very real thing, and watching a market move without you is painful. It just depends how you process that pain and whether you allow it to control you and your actions. The final part is the letting go of the fixation of the end goal, and instead being present in the journey. This is another thing that takes work. It is very easy to want the success and the perceived freedom that comes with it, yesterday, and so when it doesn't come as fast as you would like, you begin to try and force it. You take speculative trades. You over trade. You prematurely increase your stake size. This was me, with the exception of the last one. So now I try and maintain my focus not on the desired result, but on the present moment. One trade at a time.
So there you go. I am still trading. I am still enjoying it. In fact, I think with particular regards to the letting go of the outcome, I am actually enjoying it more than I have done in a very long time. I still take every trade seriously and I still have the desire to make a living from trading. I just don't have a deadline. It will happen when it is meant to. For now, I just take each trade as they come and I am enjoying the journey.
Comments