Jaye Trade Blogs

How I Fooled Myself

Looking back on my life, I don’t believe I ever handled my emotions well. Growing up I’d have a hard time expressing when something made me happy, sad, scared, upset, and everything in between, but I never realized until recently how important facing the underlying meanings behind those actions are, and what the consequences bred from the inaction would lead to.

I’m not only referring to trading here, your emotions are an extremely important part of you. It only makes sense that the situations caused by lack of clarity in your handling of yourself would only bring unwanted consequences. Did lack of conceptualizing just how much I need to work on myself end up affecting my trading as well? Absolutely, but in this case, this is one of the more minor results of my lack of self awareness. The truth is, I can tie a lot of my past issues to the way my life has lead. Not to confuse me blaming past actions for my current standing in life, I blame myself in that manner, but simply put, I acknowledge when and where these problems began. What ultimately matters is how I proceed to move forward in life. I can’t sit back and not take action, the moment I realized the situation, that became a long forgotten possibility. I’ve never been one to just allow things to happen, I prefer to take charge and change outcomes. The future is often times in our control, its just about what we do to drive it, and where that takes us.

All of this to essentially say, overcoming your emotions can be challenging, and a much more complex endeavor than many realize. There can be layers upon layers of situations, baggage, and then all the little things added in between. Add that to the fact that realizing there’s a problem to begin with, attempting to unpack that, and then being faced with the distraught it brings into your life? So many of us, myself included, tend to shy away, close up the doors, and put a lock on it. Sometimes not even on purpose, it just becomes a defense mechanism. An easy one to master at that. Do you know how easy it is to walk away? Many view it as something difficult, depending on the circumstance, but personally, I have to try my hardest to not walk away. In my personal life, I’d say that’s my biggest emotional fault, because walking away from a situation I have to decide to face, not be forced to, because there is a difference, is the only way you can move forward with the situation to begin with. It’s either face the music, or lock it up behind closed doors. Ignored forever, or until the door and all the previous ones come bursting forth in a manner you’d have never conceived. This moment for me, when my doors were burst open, locks shattered, in front of me every single situation, emotion, and memory I walked away from.. it nearly destroyed me down to my core. It was too much to handle, but I was left with no choice.

My Reality.

I sat with myself. Alone. Only my thoughts, my emotions, and whatever it was I was going to do with myself now. There’s no going back, no doors to hide behind, no memories to forget. It’s all there, out in the open, and I’m left with two choices – Face my reality, or build up my walls, put the roof on, get new doors, and lock it all away again. It’s funny, when I think back to these situations, I never even meant to hide away from these parts of my life, it just kind of happened.

I made my choice. I’m facing myself, my music, and I’m choosing to move forward. This was probably one of the most truly difficult points in my life, but it’s all I could do, because its the only way I can progress myself as an individual, which in turn means any goal I have in life as well, and failure isn’t an option. I would sit with myself, headphones on to drown out the noise around me, in complete silence, left only with my thoughts, emotions, and memories. One by one, I worked through my story. Page by page, chapter by chapter, I faced my reality. I’d lie if I said it didn’t hurt. I’d lie if I said it doesn’t anymore, because it does. I still don’t know how much of that truly goes away, but it’s slowly getting better, so I guess we’ll see. The truth is though, that it doesn’t end there. There’s always new music to face, new realities to overcome, and it tends to get tangled up with what once was. For me at least, I still face the effects my past caused in my everyday life, because I’m still working through it all. This was never going to be a walk in the park, I knew that, sitting down with myself, going through the hurt, the pain, and choosing to keep going was only me playing catch up. I did it to myself in a sense, as I hid it all deep down, but I was also younger then, and going through a lot, so it’s okay. I choose to forgive my younger self for his lack of maturity, lack of awareness, and lack of emotional clarity. I’m usually really hard on myself, constantly for every mistake, every moment, but when I think back to when I was young, I’d say that kind of falls apart a little. It’s hard to blame him when he had such a small understanding of everything going on around and within himself. And who knows, maybe when I’m 50 I’ll look back to myself now and think the same thing. Only time will tell.

I know this was a bit much, sorry for that, I got kind of caught up in the moment with writing on this topic and feel as though I rambled a little. This is a Trading blog, so if you’re for any reason wondering what the hell any of this has to do with trading, allow me to tell you, alongside the same reason I consider trading to be a spiritual endeavor. When you do the process of trading, analyzing and decision making, and you come up with a decision on what you’re about to do, all you’re left with is one thing – you now just have to take action. From the very moment you decide to do this, something within you changes, and depending on how well you handle yourself, you could be acting like a completely different person. The game changes, and it’s no longer analytical, it no longer becomes a battle to face your strategy, your logic, or anything in between. The real battle is with yourself, and the thing is, as a person, you are extremely complex. Your thoughts, behaviors, patterns, emotions, all of it directly affects how you handle yourself, and thus how you handle your trades. If you’re an emotionally unstable individual, whatever the reason may be, whether you have issues you need to work through, or your upset because you spilled coffee on yourself and for some reason you can’t get over it, it truly is statistically likely that you will trade worse for it. So facing yourself, to whatever capacity that needs to be, is just as important as the charts you face on the screen.

Thank You.

Today I didn’t write at all what I expected to write about. I knew this was the general topic, but I didn’t think this was how it would turn out. These are my favorite types of entries though, because when the writing just flows through me like this, especially on a topic I feel strongly about, I tend to feel really nice, and relaxed afterwards, and generally happy. Hope you enjoyed the read, or maybe got something from this. I’m sorry if you found it a bit of a heavy topic to read about, and if you’re going through something similar, in any capacity, I truly hope you work through things and feel better. It’s never easy, but going through it day by day is all we can do.

You got this, take care. – JayesusR