What a wonderful feeling, to look at yourself in the mirror and feel self love.
Over the last couple years that was not a common occurrence for me.
To feel like my Shadow isn’t far behind me or watching me with disdain, but that I am living the way I ought to.
Sobriety looks and feels good on me. Between that, finding a purpose to dedicate myself to, working on getting into peak physical shape, and connecting consistently with my friends and family, I just feel good all the time. Even when I’m worn out, it’s a good kind of tired. The kind where you go to sleep and wake up refreshed, ready for the next day of grateful effort. Worn out not worn down.
It’s the start of a long weekend – Good Friday is a trading holiday. This is a calendar that I will have to grow accustomed to. For now it feels new. It almost feels like Christmas, getting to wake up a little later and go for a jog before grocery shopping and doing some dishes and laundry, cooking breakfast and settling in at my terminal to start work.
What a world to live in, where a holiday lets me work! And that that makes me feel joy!
To me that tells me that I have a deep intellectual and spiritual alignment with the work I am dedicating myself to.
And my mentality towards trading has improved tremendously as well. I lost this week. I think I lost every day or almost every day, I’ll be reviewing my trades later today. But I feel great about my work this week.
My partner and I made tremendous progress on expanding our playbook, deploying an internal educational tool that is now part of my daily routine, and working on our game.
Not just my hard skills are improving but my soft skills are too.
I just finished reading a blog called Churning and Burning and the author, Peter, shares a very honest viewpoint of what it is like to trade for a living. Especially when it comes to the emotional highs but especially the lows. I think he is quite upfront about how he recognizes that his mental patterns aren’t optimal and that he sought out professional therapy for it.
For me, I find myself gravitating away from the emotions and reactions that he shares. I might have a kneejerk reaction to getting swept offsides (I’m working on mitigating that!) but overall that is rare.
I approach trading cheerfully and ideally I am moving from one good trade to the next from a position of peace. I lather myself with self love and insulate myself away from the emotional negativity that can easily creep in from successive failure.
I am working on my mental game. I am working on my hard skills. I am working on my tape reading ability. I am working on making peace with my financial situation and appreciating the buffer it provides me from many hardships of life. I am working on my fitness and my spiritual health. I am working on maintaining my sobriety. I am working on dotting my I’s and crossing my T’s for the periodic errands of life. I am working on loving myself and being more considerate of myself and my emotions. I am working on being a better friend. I am working on turning myself into the partner I hope to share with my future wife.
I am so grateful to wake up in my shoes and get to run this shot at life.
Let’s get it.
OTN