Maria Iliffe-Wood

I’m going to state it plain and simple. If you as a trader suffers from bouts of self-doubt, fears of inadequacy, concerns you may not be good enough, worries you’ll be found out, and so many more aspects that you feel are deeply personally to you, well your not alone, far far from it. As a trader I too suffered from those aspects big time. It was debilitating, choking, stifling, and seriously undermined my ability to help me reach my potential. To varying degrees, everyone on the planet suffers from these aspects of what is part of being a healthy functioning human. But that does not mean you should allow them to dominate you, own you, control you, in ways that catalyse the underperformance that is getting in the way. Coming to terms with who you are, and realising you have imperfections, but that you’re not flawed, may just be the most powerful thing you can do to improve your chances of success. There is I believe 3 stages of development every trader has to address when it comes to trading. The 1st stage, is the transactional level - What to do. The 2nd stage is addressing our behaviours, so that we can do the right things at the transactional level. This is where we start looking into trading psychology and read the likes of Douglas, Schwager, Shull and so on. But there is also a 3rd stage. This, I believe more than any other, is where the game is won in the long-term. This is where the masters prevail, and where success and failure stalk. To understand this stage, think of that phrase you hear ever seasoned trader say. - ‘Trading, more than anything else, teaches them about their self.’ Many traders who don’t make it, tell you that what they got from trading was they got to discover who they really are. This 3rd level is soul, self, you, the deep you, the real you, the you shaped by your past, your upbringing, how you came into the world, how you were nurtured in way that shaped your nature. This part of you is immutable, it lies deep within you, often covered up by layers of time, trauma, and efforts to hide it, change it, shape it! The most successful people, not necessarily the wealthiest, are often people at peace with who they are. Getting to this person within you, your true and real self, and aligning yourself with it, is often a lifetime’s journey that you never really complete, but which you get much better at. But the more you can bring your true self out, and the more closely you can align with it, the more powerful you will be as a trader, and a person. But it’s not easy, it requires a major mindset reframe, and making this reframe sticky, and then staying with it. That’s some serious heavy lifting. - But it is possible, with time and effort, and it is this that will probably have a far greater impact on your trading than any ability to assess the market fundamentals, read the sentiment, accurately use charts. If you really want to start doing something about these aspects, and start taking some degree of control and ownership of them, and their impact on your work as a trader, so you that you can start releasing yourself from the weight of your expectations and letting-go of the strangling self-judgment which goes with that, then you have to start now, because it’s gonna be a long journey. Some books I recommend to help you, none of which are trading books: The Inner Game of Tennis - Tim Gallwey Zen and the Art of MotorCycle Maintenance - Robert Persig Any of Eckhardt Tolle’s books The Art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin Mans Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl A Caged Mind - Maria Illiffe-Wood I’m sure you’ll have some of your own. Feel free to suggest them.