Written by: Justin Werlein
Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
I have been trading for five years. During this time, I've made nearly a million dollars and look forward to crossing that milestone soon. Trading has been one of the most difficult journeys of my life so far, and it has taught me so much—about myself, about decision-making, about my relationship with money, about handling pressure, about how to maintain distance from the world.
I'm writing this not to impress anyone. But because I truly wish someone had told me these things when I first started trading. It might have saved me years of struggle, a few blown accounts, and many sleepless nights of self-doubt.
After countless pains, I finally began to succeed—and the method was exactly the opposite of what I once thought I should do. This involves multiple levels: trading psychology, edge strategies, risk management. But to be honest, what truly changed everything for me wasn't a particular strategy or indicator, but a fundamental shift in perspective. A mental pivot, a reshaping of my relationship with money.
Let me explain in detail.
The Uniqueness of Trading
Trading is one of the most misunderstood professions, mainly because it doesn't fit the conventional definition of "work." People often mistakenly believe that constant action equals progress. But in trading, the opposite is true. The less you do, the better the results often are.
This single concept is enough to disorient most new traders. They approach the market the same way they approach other things: like starting a business, working out, or learning a skill—always thinking "doing more" will lead to success. In other fields, effort is visible: time invested, repetitions, weights lifted. But trading doesn't follow this logic.
The real challenge is: 90% of the "work" in trading is sitting and waiting. Waiting for those high-quality trading opportunities to clearly emerge, as if saying to you: "Now is the time." This creates a paradox: we instinctively believe that the more we look, the more we find. But in reality, the more frequently you search, the more likely you are to put yourself in a position to fail.
The essence of this industry is not about accumulating the number of trades, but about purposefully accumulating high-quality opportunities.
The problem is not just "overtrading," but the mindset that drives people to think "more doing leads to good results." I know this deeply because I used to be that way. I thought if I worked harder, stared at charts longer, studied more patterns, I could crack the market code. But that path simply doesn't work.
The Market Doesn't Care About Your Hard Work
I often see this scenario: a trader staring intently at the screen, tirelessly scanning charts, convinced that if they just push hard enough, the market will eventually reward them. But the more you force yourself to trade, the easier it is to "see" opportunities where none exist. Then, all the typical mistakes follow: Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), overusing leverage, chasing moves that don't fit your strategy... all stemming from an impulse to "do something," rather than patiently waiting for the market to unfold itself.
The market doesn't care about your ambitions. It doesn't reward hard work; it rewards correct intention and patience.
You can spend countless hours analyzing, preparing, trying to predict every fluctuation. But when the crucial moment arrives, the only thing that matters is: Are you in the right place, at the right time, with the right mindset? And this cannot be forced. You cannot succeed in the market through brute force. What you can do is learn to recognize when to act, and more importantly, when to do nothing.
For me, trading started to take on a deeper spiritual meaning here.
Money is worldly. When you chase it, grab for it, try to force it to come to you, it runs away. Like holding water in your hands, the tighter you grip, the faster it slips away.
We must understand that to gain true power in life, we need to maintain a certain distance from the worldly. If my self-worth is completely tied to the next profitable trade, the next赚钱 day, then I will forever be stuck on a hamster wheel. I must first recognize: I need to place myself outside the game, operating from a higher level of consciousness.
View Trading Through the Lens of a Video Game
Becoming a successful trader involves multiple aspects: the psychological, having an edge strategy, and strict risk management. You do need a statistical edge in the market. But this is a lesson I learned the hard way: even with a perfect strategic edge, the human operator can ruin it all with poor execution.
Therefore, I believe that cultivating the right trading perspective is the most important thing you can do.
You must treat trading like a video game.
Imagine a child coming home from school to play Call of Duty. He sits outside the screen, controller in hand, free to make decisions. He observes the actions of the character on the screen, reacts, but he is separate from the character—he is the operator, not the soldier charging into battle.
Now contrast that with another state: a person who feels like they are actually on the battlefield. Every bullet seems aimed at them, every "death" feels like their own end.
Many traders have no boundary between their trading and their self. They *are* their trading decisions. Every profit and loss becomes part of their identity: if they make money, they feel smart, capable, valuable; if they lose money, they feel stupid, useless, a failure.
But to succeed in this game with a strategic edge and human operation, you must separate yourself from every rise and fall.
How?
Beware the Trap of "Daily Validation"
First, you must understand that becoming a consistently profitable trader is a process. Not overnight, not in a week, and for most people, not even in a year.
If you expect each day or each trade to validate you, you will be trapped forever. You will take trades you shouldn't, force entries because you "need to feel like you're doing something," you will tightly bind your self-worth to your P&L (Profit & Loss)—this is a very dangerous place to be.
Many traders are stuck in "survival mode": feeling like they're on an endless hamster wheel, one good decision, then a bad one, then good, then bad... one step forward, two steps back, over and over.
How can someone succeed when their mind is constantly replaying past mistakes and blown accounts? Their mind is only full of thoughts about making back losses, proving themselves, or seeking market validation.
I was deeply there: lying in bed at night unable to sleep, replaying every bad trade in my mind. Carrying the weight of every failure as if it defined me. Feeling like I had to "make the money back" to regain self-approval.
That energy—that desperate, grasping, survival-mode energy—poisons everything. When you trade from that state, your decisions become distorted: you chase moves, revenge trade, heavy up when you shouldn't... all mistakes stem from operating in fear, not based on trust.
The Power of Forgiveness Changes Everything
This is why "forgiveness" is crucial in trading.
I don't mean some abstract, empty "feel-good" notion. I mean real forgiveness: forgive yourself for the blown accounts, forgive yourself for the stupid mistakes, forgive yourself for those moments you knew better.
You must let it all go. All of it.
Enter the market each day as a blank slate. A new day, unaffected by yesterday's trades or P&L. If you bring yesterday's losses into today's trading, you've already lost before you start. If you enter this month's trading with the shadow of last month's blown account, then you're not really trading, you're trying to heal—and the market doesn't care about your wounds.
You must be the observer in the trade. Not attached to your decisions, but able to learn from them. Detached, yet present; focused, but not desperate.
Here is a spiritual principle it took me years to understand: surrender. You must surrender the need to control the outcome, surrender the attachment to money. You must believe that by consistently doing the right thing over the long term, the results will come. And you must be okay with not knowing when or how they will arrive.
It's hard, really hard. Especially when you face bill pressures or want to prove something. But it's the only way out.
Trading Journal: An Indispensable Tool
This is why keeping a trading journal is so important.
It allows you to look back later and ask yourself: Why did I make that decision initially? What did I see at the time? What was I thinking? How did the market react to my idea?
Journaling helps create distance. It pulls you out of the game, allowing you to review like a coach watching game tape. You are no longer the soldier on the battlefield, but the player holding the controller. You can see the nature of your decisions—they are just a move in the game, not an extension of your ego.
The journal also helps you discover your own behavioral patterns. Not chart patterns, but your *own* behavior patterns: maybe you always overtrade on Mondays, maybe you always revenge trade after a loss, maybe you always add to a losing position right before it blows... You can't change what you can't see, and the journal helps you see.
Scarcity vs. Abundance: Two Radically Different Mindsets
This brings me to a concept that fundamentally changed my trading: understanding the world of difference between operating from a place of "scarcity" versus "abundance."
- Scarcity says: I must win this trade. I must make money today. I must prove I'm not a failure.
- Abundance says: The market will always be there. Opportunities will always come. My job is to wait for the right opportunity.
When you operate from scarcity, you are in a low-frequency, tense state. You are desperate, grasping. And the market—as a mirror of collective human behavior—will respond to you accordingly. You make poor decisions, attracting poor results.
When you operate from abundance, you are trusting, relaxed, waiting. You understand that money flows towards clarity and discipline, not desperation and chaos.
You must align your will with the market's will. I cannot impose my ideas on the market. I must first react to the signals the market gives. This is not weakness, it is wisdom. The market is bigger than me, bigger than all of us. My task is not to conquer it, but to dance with it.
What Are You Really Chasing?
Think back to when you made mistakes in trading, what were you really chasing? Was it an opportunity that fit your clear framework, or just "the feeling of making money"?
This is the core issue: too many traders enter the market with the subconscious goal of "making money," when the real goal should be "building good trading habits." Focus on the habits, and the money will follow.
And an even deeper question: What does money truly represent for you?
For some, money means security; for others, it means status, freedom, or proof that they are not a failure. Whatever it represents, that is what you are truly seeking when you trade. If that pursuit is tightly捆绑 with your self-worth, your decisions will inevitably reflect that insecurity.
I had to do a lot of work on my relationship with money. I had to understand that money itself is neither good nor evil; it is neutral, it is an energy. It flows where it is welcomed and flees from where it is chased. I had to learn that my personal value has nothing to do with my account balance. I had to separate "who I am" from "what I have."
After I did this, trading became much easier. Because I was no longer trading to "make myself feel good." I was trading because I had a proven strategic edge, and I was executing it strictly.
The Key Shift: From Outcome to Process
You must shift your focus from the goal of "making money short-term" to the long-term goal of "cultivating rock-solid habits." These habits will ultimately bring you far greater wealth than anything you could gain from forcing trades in the short term.
The key is to understand: success in trading is not about how much money you make today, but about your discipline in executing your strategy over the long term. The trap traders fall into is tying their satisfaction to monetary outcomes. But in this game, money is just a byproduct. You might偶然 make money by luck. If your satisfaction is tied to these偶然 outcomes, you pave the way for your own failure.
True trading success comes from deriving satisfaction from the trading process itself—from that discipline, patience, and the capacity to sit still amidst market chaos, waiting for the right moment.
The fewer trades you make, the more purposeful each trade becomes. As you start to trade less, you begin to understand: your goal is not to interact with the market constantly, but to remain patient and aware enough that when the market presents a real opportunity, you can recognize it and act.
Patience, Not Passivity
Lack of patience is the fatal flaw of most traders. That inability to sit still, that impulse to force action even when there's nothing to do, constantly erodes your capital—both financially and mentally.
Patience in trading is not passively watching the market change. It is the active choice to do nothing when no action is needed. It is being aware of your emotional state trying to take over, the voice in your head urging you to act impulsively, and being able to stop and analyze: Does this decision align with my strategic edge?
When you free yourself from the need to "constantly act," you gain a different kind of power. You will no longer try to convince yourself to take a mediocre trade. Instead, you will wait for the market to provide that trade which perfectly fits your strategy, fills you with confidence, and seems to call out to you loudly.
It is these trades that will bring you long-term success.
The Ultimate Truth
In the end, everything boils down to this: Stop trading to make money, start trading to build good habits. Stop striving and chasing, start arriving effortlessly. Shift your focus from the outcome to the process itself.
Every time you sit down to trade, remind yourself of that long-term vision: you are not here to make a quick buck today. You are here to build a trading system that can sustain you for years, even decades.
Less is more. The less you trade, the higher the quality. The fewer decisions, the clearer the thinking.
The market will always be there, but your capital won't be if you constantly chase opportunities that don't exist. Train yourself to value discipline over dollars. Success lies not in being in the market all the time, but in being in the right trade at the most important moments.
When you feel like you're putting in the least "effort," is often when you are trading most successfully.
Forgive yourself for past mistakes. Start each day fresh. Be the player holding the controller, not the soldier on the battlefield. Align your will with the market's rhythm. Work on your relationship with money. Understand that you are not your P&L.
And remember: you cannot force the market to give you what you want. You can only react to the opportunities it provides. Surrender the outcome, trust the process, let it flow naturally.
This is the game of trading. This is what I learned through five years and countless pains.
Now, it's your turn to learn—hopefully you can learn a bit faster than I did.
