Mindset: Rushing the Trading Journey

I wanted to talk about rushing the trading journey because this was a significant challenge I had very early on in my journey, and it is one I see the majority of traders make often unknowingly. That is the danger of rushing, you have no idea you are even doing it.

Mid-2018 I made the decision that I wanted to leave my corporate graduate job and seriously pursue a career in trading. I was so tired of seeing YouTube advertise 2 day trading workshops that would magically turn me into a trader... you can just smell the bullshit on these guys. If you have even a smidge of common sense, you know that if you want to become successful in any industry it is going to take time. And I knew I would have to invest in my education (FYI I was super sceptical about this, and even though the trading platform I joined was one that had a coach I saw as genuine, I still only signed up to a month initially in case it was a scam.)

Anyway, once I had joined a reputable trading educator platform and began to work through their content, I still found myself rushing through learning how to read a price chart and backtesting, all because I was driven by a desire of wanting to live trade. Every day all I focused on was: WHEN AM I GOING TO GET TO LIVE TRADING? I just thought that I could figure out how to trade once I was on a live trading account.

And I genuinely thought my attitude was one of ambition and being driven rather than just rushing because I was impatient with the process.

Senior traders in the community I was in were telling me, “SLOW DOWN NAOMI. YOU ARE RUSHING. THIS WILL BITE YOU IN THE ASS LATER ON.”

I did not listen to them. And to be honest, I thought what the hell do they know? They aren’t sat here with me. Just because they took ages it doesn’t mean I will.

Oh how I was wrong! During an accountability session with my coach, he asked me what I wanted to achieve next year (2019). I could not answer the question. This was a major wakeup call for me. It was embarrassing. But feeling that embarrassment is what woke me up.

I knew I was going to have to start my learning from the beginning (after spending 3 months rushing). Below is what I did to rectify the situation and to ensure (to the best of my ability) that I would not rush through it again.

I spent half a day sat in my room thinking, ‘forget trading. what is your end goal? what do you even want to use trading for?’ Once I got clear on that I began reverse engineering my end goal back in stages to present day. I had my road map of every step I needed to follow.

This was a game changer for me because I finally had short term milestones to focus on. This meant I was no longer focusing solely on live trading, because there were several milestones that came prior to this.

They were:

1. Build a solid foundation: learn how to read a price chart, understand the different concepts of reading price individually.

2. Put it all together: put the different pieces of reading a price chart together so you can see the story that it is telling you.

3. Explore different strategies: review the strategies available.
4. Select a strategy: select a strategy depending on your lifestyle and time commitments.

5. Develop a strategy: get clear and write the rules out for your strategy, and purchase or create a backtesting spreadsheet.

6. Backtest that strategy: go through historic data and ensure your edge is profitable.

7. Execute that strategy: demo trade and then live trade!

I then broke down this broad plan into monthly and daily tasks. I also figured out ways to stop me from rushing. If I could devise some objective way to measure my progress then the chances of me unconsciously rushing again would be greatly reduced. What really forced me to follow a method that would actually have a high probability of working was:

Having clear and realistic deadlines that were realistic according to MY PERSONAL LIFESTYLE (we are all different, whilst I may have 10 hours a day to commit to my journey, someone else may have 1 hour. It is just reality...hence our target deadlines will be different.)

Clear methodical ways to test myself (I created objective ways to test myself so that I could see whether or not I had progresses rather than my subjective ‘wanting to live trade’ self was not the one making all the decisions.)

An overview of the trading journey. This was complete belief transference because I knew (and still know) that by following it I will reach my goals. I knew if I did not follow it then I could kiss bye bye to my big dreams of what I want to use trading for.

Did all these things completely abolish my results driven mindset?

NO.

But it was definitely the start of at least being on the right track.

The irony behind everything mentioned is that focusing on the process is actually the quickest way to get the result. Focusing on the result is the slowest way to achieve it.

Naomi Gorta-Slight
Instagram and Twitter: @naomigslight

Podcast: The Trading Journey Podcast