Don’t fool yourself: I know that you take it personally when a trade goes against you, and how can you not? After all your trading results reflect your skill level as a trader, or don’t they?

 

I have been trading since 2001. Like many traders before me I started out with a big ego and a strong “can do” attitude. It wasn’t long though before the market showed me a very different aspect of myself. I became aware of a very different persona, a persona that was weak, ego driven responding incredibly emotionally to every trade.

 

It took years of deep searching inside to understand what really was going on:

 

My feel for the market was good, I understood the technical aspects of the markets, yet I was unable to stick to any system for any length of time. My stops were too tight, I overtraded, I impulse traded, well you get the picture. I am sure many of you have been through the same.

 

One day it dawned on me that I used my trading not so much as a means to earn a steady income as an independent trader, but that my main purpose was to prove something to myself and to the world.

 

In time I noticed how I was taking every trade very personally. I was destined to seek out those trades that would not work.

 

When I do something, I do it “properly”. I was more than just identifying with the winner or the loser. I had given over my inner independence to trading. This was rather ironic, because the very thing that got me into trading, apart from my love for anything to do with the financial markets, was the idea of being truly independent from everyone.

 

Not only did my entire self worth depend on me becoming a successful trader, I also had a number of personal issues with the financial system, a Swiss broker had fraudulently squandered my parents’ entire retirement funds, which I felt I could win back by trading the markets.

 

My ego traded way too big, way too early in my trading career. The notion of surrendering to the markets was but an intellectual idea which sounded interesting, but which had no validity in my personal life. Unwittingly I was completely suckered into the illusion of “working” my way to success, instead of “feeling” my way there, that I lost track of the real person inside me who was disappearing faster every day as the trading losses mounted and my unresolved value conflicts came more and more to the fore.

 

I had started to immerse myself in the study of Buddhism and other teachings from the wisdom traditions, alas, like so many before me, reading a book alone, and attending seminars does not necessarily bring one into harmony with oneself, or the markets.

 

Bridging the gap between the intellectual understanding of a new concept and successfully applying it in your every day life are two very different things. There are very few coaches who can teach this successfully, as I discovered on my journey to the Holy (Trading) Grail.

 

The big shift only came once I realised for myself how I was making everything I did a measure of the “real” me.

 

That moment was the culmination of many years of inner work, learning to let go, meditating, having followed many a wrong path in search of the Holy Grail. Like many traders I mistook the Holy Grail for something that is generated externally, when it is only to be found in one place and that place is deep inside oneself and when I realised that there are a few universal laws that apply to all of us, I had been ignorant off.   

 

Until that day every trade I took was a measure of my value as a person in this world. When I traded badly, I was not worthy friendship, pleasure, or love. The idea of compassion for myself was just that: An idea.

 

I was so far removed from that concept that I did not know how to start accessing that part inside of me where the heart resides. I was not a nasty person, on the contrary, I would always go out of my way to help others, I still do, Alas, I did not realise that I had been acting not from a place of inner worth and appreciation of my gifts and talents, rather I was acting from a lack of self worth and the desperate need to prove that I had something to offer. I worked harder and ever harder to prove that I could trade. If only I had understood the basic laws of the universe and how they apply to all of us, I could have saved myself years of pain and struggle. Maybe this is why I feel compelled to teach and write about these matters today, as the understanding can help many of you have better trading experiences.

 

The pain of resistance

 

Understanding the real issues of mental resistance is paramount to learning how we function on the path of personal growth.

 

Even though I was told on several occasions that the difficulties I had where the mental resistance I had towards change, the statement meant very little to me in practical terms until the big day finally arrived and I awoke from the slumber of immersion in my mental rut.

 

At the time I was writing the first edition of my first book on trading psychology “The Buddhist Trader”. I had discussed the personal and impersonal aspects of the evolutionary process that pertains to all of life, yet somehow until that big day I had failed to apply the knowledge to my own life and above all to my trading life.

 

Mental resistance keeps us in a false safety loop. We believe our personal  survival is at stake.

 

Modern neuro science has produced a number of studies how the mind puts up resistance to accept everything that is unfamiliar. Neuro scientists would say that our minds are “hardwired” for resistance. Alas, this statement doesn’t mean that we cannot change the hardwiring.  It means that resistance is a common protection mechanism we have learnt in order to survive as a species. It is not personal, but universal and applies to all of evolution. Put simply, resistance prevents evolution from happening too quickly.

 

When the inner impulse for change awakens on one level of our consciousness and desire motivates us to create changes the deeper, hardwired parts of the brain cannot produce the shifts quickly enough. In an attempt to assist us the mind will sooner or later flag up anything that stands in the way of achieving the desire.

 

The resulting value conflicts that make their appearance when our consciousness begins to expand into greater awareness of ourselves activates the protection mechanism of the old part of the brain. Add to that the social conditioning of the brain which is the part that has been programmed by parents, and other caretakers to be careful, stay within the confines of the system, and not to “rebel” against the established social norms and values, and we can appreciate the immense issue resistance plays in all development.

 

As a society we have learned to take everything personally.

 

We believe that how we conduct ourselves in life determines how others see us and how they value us. We value ourselves not by how we see ourselves, but how others see us. We have bought into the illusion of appearances yet again, which is the root cause of so many trading issues. In fact, it is the root cause of all your trading issues.

 

Trading life is a mirror of your innermost conditioning, what you see on the outside reflects your deepest thoughts and values. Alas, the untrained mind is not aware of how it creates its external reality, instead falling prey to the emotions of victimhood believing that trading life is set up to get you.

 

I hardly need to elaborate further how this deep rooted concept affects your trading, and how it adversely affects your entire life choices.

 

Until you have learnt to distinguish clearly between the part of you that is steeped in old, outdated default behaviors and learnt techniques to help you to step confidently into that part of you that naturally expands and grows independent from constraints which you have erroneously personalised as “your limitations”, you will struggle with any kind of lasting progress, last but not least with your trading.