The biggest lesson I’ve ever learned in my trading journey is not one simple ‘hack’ that will change your trading immediately. It’s not some chart concept or ‘secret system’.
It’s the culmination of a few mental factors that create the foundation of your success.
I’ve learned that without these mental factors you will NEVER win.
Not from just my own experience but from the experience of my 2200+ students who struggled to make any money at all until they adopted these mental frameworks.
These mental factors are:
> Perception
> Discipline
> Rationality
> Action
I call this collection of traits the ‘4 Pillars of Success’.
These are the pillars that your entire trading career will be built upon. Without them anything you build will be fragile & prone to fail and one wrong move can unravel everything you’ve worked for.
So before you do ANYTHING else you need to understand these ‘4 Pillars’.
Let’s break them down right now.
1 – Perception
Perception is the way you view trading. Your outlook of what success really looks like & how you actually attain it.
Believe it or not, 99% of traders have an absolutely twisted perception of trading and this kills all possibility of winning from the very beginning.
Let’s start with a thought exercise…
What does trading success look like to you?
Freedom?
Short work hours?
Money in the bank?
Not answering to a boss?
The ‘Laptop Lifestyle’?
If you resonate with any of the points above, I’m sorry to say you’re currently doomed to fail.
(but don’t worry we’re gonna fix that now!)
Let me explain…
The list above is attainable. Yes you can create a life of freedom through trading, where you can make a lot of money with only a small time commitment each day. And you can work from anywhere in the world without having to answer to a boss or clients or anyone else.
But this is NOT what trading success looks like….
These benefits are simply BYPRODUCTS of trading success.
In reality, trading success looks like this:
1) A validated written trading plan
2) Consistency in routines
3) Turning up every day
4) Following your risk guidelines
5) Journaling your results & emotions
6) Reviewing your journal consistently
7) Staying disciplined through wins & losses
8) Continually backtesting & studying your work
9) Aiming for consistent realistic gains (5%/pm)
10) Sticking to the plan
Your perception of trading success should not lie with the outcome, but the process.
Only when this is how you perceive trading success, can you adopt the right attitude.
Only when you adopt the right attitude, can you translate that view of trading into REAL RESULTS.
Do you follow?
What you need to do right now is STOP living in a dream world. Stop dreaming of the life you want to live, and stop thinking about all the amazing things trading is going to bring you.
Instead: Zoom out and take a look at what you have been doing for the past year. Does this encourage results? Or is it time wasted on a dream?
Success starts with the correct perception of reality.
It’s time to shift that perception.
So here’s what I want you to do:
1 – Think about your current perception of success
2 – Throw away that false belief
3 – Put emphasis on the real pieces of the puzzle
4 – Build your plans & routines
5 – Take focused action with absolute consistency
Use your new perspective to craft the attitude of a winner.
You simply cannot win if your perception is wrong. Your focus will be in the wrong places which will sap all of your time & energy without offering any progress to you, your career or your future.
Focus on building skill & mastering the PROCESS.
The money, freedom & all those other ‘byproduct’ benefits will come in due time to those who do the work that NEEDS doing.
2 – Discipline
You’ve heard it all before. “Traders must be disciplined”.
But I promise you’re not taking it seriously enough (which probably isn’t your fault). We’re going to ‘gamify’ this pillar into a fun little story with a big lesson.
Consider this scenario:
We have 2 traders. Paul & Jesse. Both start out at exactly the same level, zero skill & zero experience. Same IQ. Same formal education. Same skillset. Neither has an advantage over the other.
Here’s how their stories go:
After 6 months:
Paul has only just started trading with real money. He took some time to test out ideas and build frameworks before getting involved with real money.
Jesse is on his third live account. He’s had some ups & downs, ended some weeks profitably & some weeks in the red. He’s learned a lot from his experience in the markets but hasn’t yet translated this knowledge into profits.
After 6 months Paul’s PnL is -$200, Jesse’s PnL is -$500. At this time there’s really not too much of a visible difference in the performance of these two traders.
After 1 year:
Paul has taken things slow. He’s had a few losing months and a few winning months, but throughout good & bad he has managed to follow his systems & stay on top.
Jesse has continued his usual routine of waking up, checking the charts, looking for a trade, if he can’t find one he might pop on social media and look for someone else’s idea to copy, then he wins or he loses and the outcome really makes no difference.
After 12 months Paul’s PnL is +$300, Jesse’s PnL is -$3,000. Now we are starting to see the divergence formed by the differing actions of both traders.
After 2 years:
Paul has acquired trading capital from an investor & is trading his systems through all market conditions, accepting a reasonable but modest avg +4% per month return.
Jesse is following his usual aimless cycle. Wake up, trade, sleep, repeat. He has a lot of knowledge and experience but is continually digging deeper into the hole of loss…
…Sound familiar?
2 years in…Paul’s PnL is now +$12,000, while Jesse is suffering a loss of -$8,000.
The cycle repeats for both traders, 5 years into their endeavour Paul is trading full-time pulling in an average yearly return of $125,000 for himself.
Jesse actually quit just recently having never found any success, exiting with a -$30,000 loss. He calls trading a scam and moves on with his life without ever seeing the benefit of all the experience & knowledge he collected over his years in the market.
What did Paul have that Jesse didn’t? That allowed him to realise his dreams while Jesse crashed in ruin?
The answer…is discipline.
If you want to be on the positive side of the divergence between winner & loser… You too must adopt unwavering discipline into your mindset & frameworks.
The answer is not to just think ‘sure whatever, I’ll be disciplined’. It’s to figure out where your discipline needs to be focused.
Here’s a list of key areas you need to apply discipline to:
1) Risk management strategy
2) Following your technical system
3) Carrying out fundamental analysis
4) Regular backtesting sessions
5) End-of-day journaling
6) Turning up every session
7) Knowing when NOT to trade
Sometimes we don’t feel motivated to do these things and while that is understandable, it’s certainly NOT acceptable.
The easiest way to instil discipline is to instil habits. It’s easier to do something you don’t feel like doing when it’s something you always do naturally. Think cleaning your house…it’s not exactly fun and you may not be motivated to do it, but you do it anyway because it needs to be done and it’s a natural habit in your mind!
So…here’s what I want you to do:
Commit to just 1 single week of new habits. All you have to do for one single week:
Turn up to your session & carry out your plan EXACTLY, no deviation.
After your session spend 15-30 minutes journaling the days trades & emotions.
Spend 30 minutes a day backtesting your plan to build confidence in yourself.
Outside of your primary session…NO CHART TIME.
No silly trades, only study.
If you commit to doing this for one week, it will be the start of a new chapter.
It’s not a hard challenge. It’s not a lot of work. But the positive effects will radiate.
Once you have done one week, do one more. Then one more after that.
Let your new positive habits compound into a habit & see the effect it has on your results!
Remember why you are here. You are striving for greatness, not mediocracy, so don’t lower yourself to the processes of mediocre losing traders.
Carry out the processes that make traders great. Apply discipline to your work.
3 – Rationality
Here’s one no one ever talks about…
A running theme you’ve heard within this lesson is while you may believe you are doing everything right… there’s a lot beneath the surface that you need to be thinking about in more depth.
As you may have guessed… the same goes for this topic of rationality.
Are you a rational trader? Do you act with good judgement? Maybe you are inclined to say yes, but let’s get you thinking:
When was the last time you took a really great trade, taking profits where you said you would and locking in the trade feeling proud of yourself… only to then throw it all away on the next awful setup you came across and ending the week negative?
When was the last time you blew a trading account or failed a funding challenge due to a really stupid decision to enter into a trade with more risk than you know you should be using?
When was the last time you doubled down on a trade or threw caution to the wind and went all in on a single trade with misguided baseless confidence?
See these are all things you KNOW you shouldn’t be doing…
Yet you do it anyway.
Despite knowing deep down what you SHOULD be doing your irrational mind simply won’t let you do it, and will take you down the path of stupidity, leaving you with nothing but another loss, another failure & another disappointment.
An irrational mind is one of the worst things a trader can have because it overwrites all experience, knowledge & ambition.
It simply does not matter how ‘good’ your understandings are if stupid mistakes consistently cost you all of your progress
Worse yet, it’s a tough beast to defeat.
But you can rid yourself of this demon…
Here’s where you can start:
1) Buy yourself a notebook or journal over the weekend
2) Next week, fill it in daily & track all your emotions & processes
3) Be honest about any judgement lapses & how they hurt your trading
4) Revisit the journal at the start of each day and relive the pain caused by your actions
5) Revisit the reports at the end of the week
6) Assess your real performance vs the potential performance of your hypothetical rational self
By marking down your shortcomings every day you start to instil the importance of rationality within. You will see first hand how your bad judgement and bad habits are killing the results of your trading work.
This pain & drive to defeat the pain will lead you into better trading.
It’s a highly effective exercise. Trust me. It’s one of the last things I had to do before crossing the line into consistent profitability.
Irrationality is a demon you must destroy from the inside.
THIS is the biggest step you’ll take towards doing just that.
4 – Action
There is no progress without action.
If you never make the move to get better, you will never improve.
So far we covered 3 core pillars:
Perception, Discipline & Rationality
Now I want to push you to take action upon the other 3 pillars of success. To achieve success in any field you need to take real raw action.
‘I’ll start backtesting tomorrow’
‘I’ll journal later’
‘I’ll start learning that next week’
‘I just need some time’
I’m sure you’ve had at least one of these thoughts. If you’re like most traders you’ll have put off doing any of the important stuff all together. Once again it’s not your fault & I’m not attacking you, most traders are just taught wrong from the start.
But you need to understand the importance of real raw action.
See mindset is important. The other 3 pillars have some super interesting points that can change your trading for the better, but without putting the teachings into action… no level of mental clarity will get you anywhere.
As traders we have to be constantly ready & willing to ACT on scenarios the market provides. And we should be always ready & willing to ACT upon our personal improvement.
If you are not you will simply fall behind. In a competitive landscape as ruthless as the markets the outcome is simple: if you don’t act, someone else will. If you aren’t willing to fight to win then someone else will gladly take away your money and take away your success.
I am glad my other lessons got you thinking…
But THINKING is NOT enough.
ACT. FAST.
Don’t wait for someone to take your place at the top. Because they will. The fight will never end. Those who take action will always take the crown.
So what should you do now?
Look back over the ‘4 Pillars’ I have given to you throughout this lesson and take real action upon the different tasks I set out for you, and then build out your ACTION PLAN:
How are you going to take on the markets this year?What are you trying to achieve?How will you get there?What action can you take EVERY DAY to improve?What action will you take TODAY to get the ball rolling?
Action is the most important pillar of success in trading & any other endeavour.
Remember – everything is at stake.
You win or you lose.
You take the crown or someone else will.
Take action! I am rooting for you.
But ultimately it is YOU who decides your future.
Not me.
Let’s recap…
The BIGGEST lesson I ever learned in my trading was not some special ‘hack’. It was learning the importance of these 4 mental elements, and then applying ACTION to bring my findings to reality.
When you have the right perception, you apply your strategy with discipline, you trade with rationality & you take action every day towards your personal improvement you become an unstoppable force.
When you do none of these things… You just go round & round in a sad cycle of losing it all until one day it crushes your soul so bad that you quit forever & give up on your dreams.
Success starts from within. Not with some wishy washy BS… But with the 4 crucial characteristics I’ve laid out for you today.
This revelation came to me through thousands of hours of stress, sadness, hopelessness & the fear that I could never make trading work.
But it’s been given to you in just 20 minutes of focus… so you can avoid the sad state of affairs that I went through, without excuse.
So now you know what to do… TAKE ACTION!
The biggest lesson I’ve ever learned in my trading journey is not one simple ‘hack’ that will change your trading immediately. It’s not some chart concept or ‘secret system’.
It’s the culmination of a few mental factors that create the foundation of your success.
I’ve learned that without these mental factors you will NEVER win.
Not from just my own experience but from the experience of my 2200+ students who struggled to make any money at all until they adopted these mental frameworks.
These mental factors are:
> Perception
> Discipline
> Rationality
> Action
I call this collection of traits the ‘4 Pillars of Success’.
These are the pillars that your entire trading career will be built upon. Without them anything you build will be fragile & prone to fail and one wrong move can unravel everything you’ve worked for.
So before you do ANYTHING else you need to understand these ‘4 Pillars’.
Let’s break them down right now.
1 – Perception
Perception is the way you view trading. Your outlook of what success really looks like & how you actually attain it.
Believe it or not, 99% of traders have an absolutely twisted perception of trading and this kills all possibility of winning from the very beginning.
Let’s start with a thought exercise…
What does trading success look like to you?
Freedom?
Short work hours?
Money in the bank?
Not answering to a boss?
The ‘Laptop Lifestyle’?
If you resonate with any of the points above, I’m sorry to say you’re currently doomed to fail.
(but don’t worry we’re gonna fix that now!)
Let me explain…
The list above is attainable. Yes you can create a life of freedom through trading, where you can make a lot of money with only a small time commitment each day. And you can work from anywhere in the world without having to answer to a boss or clients or anyone else.
But this is NOT what trading success looks like….
These benefits are simply BYPRODUCTS of trading success.
In reality, trading success looks like this:
1) A validated written trading plan
2) Consistency in routines
3) Turning up every day
4) Following your risk guidelines
5) Journaling your results & emotions
6) Reviewing your journal consistently
7) Staying disciplined through wins & losses
8) Continually backtesting & studying your work
9) Aiming for consistent realistic gains (5%/pm)
10) Sticking to the plan
Your perception of trading success should not lie with the outcome, but the process.
Only when this is how you perceive trading success, can you adopt the right attitude.
Only when you adopt the right attitude, can you translate that view of trading into REAL RESULTS.
Do you follow?
What you need to do right now is STOP living in a dream world. Stop dreaming of the life you want to live, and stop thinking about all the amazing things trading is going to bring you.
Instead: Zoom out and take a look at what you have been doing for the past year. Does this encourage results? Or is it time wasted on a dream?
Success starts with the correct perception of reality.
It’s time to shift that perception.
So here’s what I want you to do:
1 – Think about your current perception of success
2 – Throw away that false belief
3 – Put emphasis on the real pieces of the puzzle
4 – Build your plans & routines
5 – Take focused action with absolute consistency
Use your new perspective to craft the attitude of a winner.
You simply cannot win if your perception is wrong. Your focus will be in the wrong places which will sap all of your time & energy without offering any progress to you, your career or your future.
Focus on building skill & mastering the PROCESS.
The money, freedom & all those other ‘byproduct’ benefits will come in due time to those who do the work that NEEDS doing.
2 – Discipline
You’ve heard it all before. “Traders must be disciplined”.
But I promise you’re not taking it seriously enough (which probably isn’t your fault). We’re going to ‘gamify’ this pillar into a fun little story with a big lesson.
Consider this scenario:
We have 2 traders. Paul & Jesse. Both start out at exactly the same level, zero skill & zero experience. Same IQ. Same formal education. Same skillset. Neither has an advantage over the other.
Here’s how their stories go:
After 6 months:
Paul has only just started trading with real money. He took some time to test out ideas and build frameworks before getting involved with real money.
Jesse is on his third live account. He’s had some ups & downs, ended some weeks profitably & some weeks in the red. He’s learned a lot from his experience in the markets but hasn’t yet translated this knowledge into profits.
After 6 months Paul’s PnL is -$200, Jesse’s PnL is -$500. At this time there’s really not too much of a visible difference in the performance of these two traders.
After 1 year:
Paul has taken things slow. He’s had a few losing months and a few winning months, but throughout good & bad he has managed to follow his systems & stay on top.
Jesse has continued his usual routine of waking up, checking the charts, looking for a trade, if he can’t find one he might pop on social media and look for someone else’s idea to copy, then he wins or he loses and the outcome really makes no difference.
After 12 months Paul’s PnL is +$300, Jesse’s PnL is -$3,000. Now we are starting to see the divergence formed by the differing actions of both traders.
After 2 years:
Paul has acquired trading capital from an investor & is trading his systems through all market conditions, accepting a reasonable but modest avg +4% per month return.
Jesse is following his usual aimless cycle. Wake up, trade, sleep, repeat. He has a lot of knowledge and experience but is continually digging deeper into the hole of loss…
…Sound familiar?
2 years in…Paul’s PnL is now +$12,000, while Jesse is suffering a loss of -$8,000.
The cycle repeats for both traders, 5 years into their endeavour Paul is trading full-time pulling in an average yearly return of $125,000 for himself.
Jesse actually quit just recently having never found any success, exiting with a -$30,000 loss. He calls trading a scam and moves on with his life without ever seeing the benefit of all the experience & knowledge he collected over his years in the market.
What did Paul have that Jesse didn’t? That allowed him to realise his dreams while Jesse crashed in ruin?
The answer…is discipline.
If you want to be on the positive side of the divergence between winner & loser… You too must adopt unwavering discipline into your mindset & frameworks.
The answer is not to just think ‘sure whatever, I’ll be disciplined’. It’s to figure out where your discipline needs to be focused.
Here’s a list of key areas you need to apply discipline to:
1) Risk management strategy
2) Following your technical system
3) Carrying out fundamental analysis
4) Regular backtesting sessions
5) End-of-day journaling
6) Turning up every session
7) Knowing when NOT to trade
Sometimes we don’t feel motivated to do these things and while that is understandable, it’s certainly NOT acceptable.
The easiest way to instil discipline is to instil habits. It’s easier to do something you don’t feel like doing when it’s something you always do naturally. Think cleaning your house…it’s not exactly fun and you may not be motivated to do it, but you do it anyway because it needs to be done and it’s a natural habit in your mind!
So…here’s what I want you to do:
Commit to just 1 single week of new habits. All you have to do for one single week:
Turn up to your session & carry out your plan EXACTLY, no deviation.
After your session spend 15-30 minutes journaling the days trades & emotions.
Spend 30 minutes a day backtesting your plan to build confidence in yourself.
Outside of your primary session…NO CHART TIME.
No silly trades, only study.
If you commit to doing this for one week, it will be the start of a new chapter.
It’s not a hard challenge. It’s not a lot of work. But the positive effects will radiate.
Once you have done one week, do one more. Then one more after that.
Let your new positive habits compound into a habit & see the effect it has on your results!
Remember why you are here. You are striving for greatness, not mediocracy, so don’t lower yourself to the processes of mediocre losing traders.
Carry out the processes that make traders great. Apply discipline to your work.
3 – Rationality
Here’s one no one ever talks about…
A running theme you’ve heard within this lesson is while you may believe you are doing everything right… there’s a lot beneath the surface that you need to be thinking about in more depth.
As you may have guessed… the same goes for this topic of rationality.
Are you a rational trader? Do you act with good judgement? Maybe you are inclined to say yes, but let’s get you thinking:
When was the last time you took a really great trade, taking profits where you said you would and locking in the trade feeling proud of yourself… only to then throw it all away on the next awful setup you came across and ending the week negative?
When was the last time you blew a trading account or failed a funding challenge due to a really stupid decision to enter into a trade with more risk than you know you should be using?
When was the last time you doubled down on a trade or threw caution to the wind and went all in on a single trade with misguided baseless confidence?
See these are all things you KNOW you shouldn’t be doing…
Yet you do it anyway.
Despite knowing deep down what you SHOULD be doing your irrational mind simply won’t let you do it, and will take you down the path of stupidity, leaving you with nothing but another loss, another failure & another disappointment.
An irrational mind is one of the worst things a trader can have because it overwrites all experience, knowledge & ambition.
It simply does not matter how ‘good’ your understandings are if stupid mistakes consistently cost you all of your progress
Worse yet, it’s a tough beast to defeat.
But you can rid yourself of this demon…
Here’s where you can start:
1) Buy yourself a notebook or journal over the weekend
2) Next week, fill it in daily & track all your emotions & processes
3) Be honest about any judgement lapses & how they hurt your trading
4) Revisit the journal at the start of each day and relive the pain caused by your actions
5) Revisit the reports at the end of the week
6) Assess your real performance vs the potential performance of your hypothetical rational self
By marking down your shortcomings every day you start to instil the importance of rationality within. You will see first hand how your bad judgement and bad habits are killing the results of your trading work.
This pain & drive to defeat the pain will lead you into better trading.
It’s a highly effective exercise. Trust me. It’s one of the last things I had to do before crossing the line into consistent profitability.
Irrationality is a demon you must destroy from the inside.
THIS is the biggest step you’ll take towards doing just that.
4 – Action
There is no progress without action.
If you never make the move to get better, you will never improve.
So far we covered 3 core pillars:
Perception, Discipline & Rationality
Now I want to push you to take action upon the other 3 pillars of success. To achieve success in any field you need to take real raw action.
‘I’ll start backtesting tomorrow’
‘I’ll journal later’
‘I’ll start learning that next week’
‘I just need some time’
I’m sure you’ve had at least one of these thoughts. If you’re like most traders you’ll have put off doing any of the important stuff all together. Once again it’s not your fault & I’m not attacking you, most traders are just taught wrong from the start.
But you need to understand the importance of real raw action.
See mindset is important. The other 3 pillars have some super interesting points that can change your trading for the better, but without putting the teachings into action… no level of mental clarity will get you anywhere.
As traders we have to be constantly ready & willing to ACT on scenarios the market provides. And we should be always ready & willing to ACT upon our personal improvement.
If you are not you will simply fall behind. In a competitive landscape as ruthless as the markets the outcome is simple: if you don’t act, someone else will. If you aren’t willing to fight to win then someone else will gladly take away your money and take away your success.
I am glad my other lessons got you thinking…
But THINKING is NOT enough.
ACT. FAST.
Don’t wait for someone to take your place at the top. Because they will. The fight will never end. Those who take action will always take the crown.
So what should you do now?
Look back over the ‘4 Pillars’ I have given to you throughout this lesson and take real action upon the different tasks I set out for you, and then build out your ACTION PLAN:
How are you going to take on the markets this year?What are you trying to achieve?How will you get there?What action can you take EVERY DAY to improve?What action will you take TODAY to get the ball rolling?
Action is the most important pillar of success in trading & any other endeavour.
Remember – everything is at stake.
You win or you lose.
You take the crown or someone else will.
Take action! I am rooting for you.
But ultimately it is YOU who decides your future.
Not me.
Let’s recap…
The BIGGEST lesson I ever learned in my trading was not some special ‘hack’. It was learning the importance of these 4 mental elements, and then applying ACTION to bring my findings to reality.
When you have the right perception, you apply your strategy with discipline, you trade with rationality & you take action every day towards your personal improvement you become an unstoppable force.
When you do none of these things… You just go round & round in a sad cycle of losing it all until one day it crushes your soul so bad that you quit forever & give up on your dreams.
Success starts from within. Not with some wishy washy BS… But with the 4 crucial characteristics I’ve laid out for you today.
This revelation came to me through thousands of hours of stress, sadness, hopelessness & the fear that I could never make trading work.
But it’s been given to you in just 20 minutes of focus… so you can avoid the sad state of affairs that I went through, without excuse.
So now you know what to do… TAKE ACTION!