Change Your Story as a Trader

Change your story, change your life
— Tony Robbins

What you identify with determines how you go through life and how you act. I've experienced that myself - first in IT, later in trading. In my career I tied my identity to social status, and at the start of my trading career I let my mental wellbeing be determined by profit or loss. External outcomes therefore had a huge influence on how I felt and who I thought I was. In my younger years I thought I could find meaning in a good job, in a senior role that offered status and security. Later I sought that same meaning in trading. Profit felt good, loss felt bad, and my wellbeing depended on individual trades. What I experienced back then I now call mental materialism: tying your identity to external outcomes. Only once I shifted my focus from outcomes to patience and process - precisely because results were lagging and I was more than sick of losing - did the results start showing up almost silently. Ironically, that happened by working less hard, something that feels contradictory within our achievement-driven society. The saying "not trading is also trading" is often hard for novice traders to grasp. It feels like working a day without getting paid, but for me this turned out to be exactly the right approach.

Whatever I identify with mentally, I begin to behave accordingly. That's not philosophy, that's neuropsychology. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A lot of that identity isn't actually mine, but learned and ingrained. School, studying, performing, responsibilities, job, mortgage, pension - safe and predictable. That's not a real identity, that's conditioning. And that exact mindset, focused on social status, achievement and security, runs directly counter to what trading demands.

The market is uncertain, unpredictable and impersonal, and I too tried to draw confirmation from it the way I was used to - in the form of dollars. That turned out not to be sustainable, just as making companies commercially more and more successful, which I did for years in IT, ultimately turned out not to be sustainable either.

A well-known saying goes: the map is not the territory. That means my thoughts aren't reality, my past doesn't have to determine who I am, and my beliefs aren't facts. In short: I am not my thinking. Once I became aware of the limiting patterns that were subconsciously steering me, I realized that map was defining my world. The moment I started looking beyond it and saw a much wider territory, my entire perspective flipped. I let go of the map, and my fears and uncertainties became my fuel - fuel to move toward the goal of freedom I could now picture in that wider perspective.

Something I learned an enormous amount from comes from the book Man's Search for Meaning by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. He describes how people are indeed conditioned, but never fully determined. We're shaped by circumstances and influenced by what we go through, but we're not locked in place by it. What counts is how you define yourself. This insight set the end of my IT career in motion. I realized I was mostly busy realizing other people's dreams - well paid, but not very fulfilling. I quit, we sold the house, and chose freedom. That took courage and meant facing uncertainty head-on, especially since my trading results weren't very promising at that point. At the same time, taking control of my own life gave a deep inner calm, trust and meaning - something few things can match. As Steve Jobs put it so well:

"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you… and you can change it."

That means you too can create something that can change your future. And that's what I set out to do. I changed my story, and with it, my life.

What I learned - and am still learning - is that taking leaps and experiencing failure has taken me further than safety ever did; that what you believe becomes true for your subconscious; that visualization works because the subconscious brain doesn't distinguish between real and imagined; and that you can redefine yourself. It made me unstoppable. My own process became my catalyst. Henry Ford put it simply: "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right."

Trading is therefore an excellent mirror. I hear students react when the process doesn't go the way they'd like. The words differ, but the story is often the same: trouble accepting what is, trouble letting go of control, difficulty being patient, trouble with mediocre results and trouble with loss. The explanation they give themselves isn't always the real cause—it's a story. And the story you tell yourself becomes the boundary of your behavior. Trading demands leadership, discipline, patience, control and calm under pressure. So my suggestion is to consciously turn these key words into your own belief, for example: "From today I am a disciplined trader, focused on the process, who can exercise self-control and remain calm under pressure - regardless of whether I win or lose."

The core lesson I took from Frankl's book is simple and at the same time forward-looking: everything can be taken from you, except for one thing - the freedom to choose how you respond to what happens to you. Applied to trading that means: you have no control over the market, only over your attitude.

And if your attitude is tied to a bigger goal - for most people freedom, autonomy and meaning - then you learn to swallow temporary setbacks and do what's needed, regardless of circumstances, regardless of how much time it takes.

Because our fear doesn't actually come from the future and what it will bring, but from the will that tries to control it, and from the stories we tell ourselves and then start to believe.

What will your story be - as a trader, and as a person?

Because the story you believe today can be the success you live tomorrow.

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Also review the reflections on several trades from the past week for additional technical lessons.