MAY 2023 - MONTHLY REVIEW
Life is beautiful in a way that there's no limit to how many times we'll receive the same lesson. It will come to us however many times are needed - until we learn it and are able to move to the next level. Have you ever noticed how you're running in the same wheel and events are repeating? That's what I'm talking about. That is a sign that the lesson is not learnt yet, or maybe not even acknowledged yet. The only way to escape this wheel is by finding out what needs to be learnt and do it.
Last month I confronted my Shadow Self as familiarly as never before. The Shadow Self is not your friend, advisor or nurse. It can appear angry, but it's not just a mean teacher who is wishing you 'all the best' deep in his heart. It can appear as your enemy, but even that is not true, because enemies are created by our foolish minds, drowning in one-sided illusions. The Shadow Self just IS, and it has only one mission - to destroy you.
It will do everything that it can so that you wouldn't achieve what you desire. The Shadow Self has many names in different philosophies and religions of the world. One of those names is the force of Resistance. In physics, every force has its anti-force. Therefore, it doesn't matter what you do, you will eventually meet with your Resistance. You can't get rid of it nor destroy it. Yu have to learn to recognize it and work despite being influenced by this force.
To recognize your Shadow Self, you need to choose your area of work and dive to it very deep. It's not enough to just become a professional - you need to go through your highest euphoric highs and soul-wrecking lows, walk through the desert of boredom, and beyond that you can start looking for your Shadow Self. In order to arrive at this point, your chosen area of work has to completely match your highest values. In my case the meeting with Shadow Self happened while trading in the financial markets, but it can happen in any area of work that you love.
There's one serious advantage of this meeting though - it's a confirmation sign that this area of work is indeed the most important to you and it strongly resonates with the reason why you were born on this planet. Meaning that if you continue working in this area, you have real chances of experiencing realisation of the soul. But beware that this path is the hardest one. When you're choosing easy paths, your Shadow Self is wickedly enjoying that, but the soul always knows where it actually has to be. You can't fool yourself and the choice is yours.
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I am a person who is learning very slowly. I don't think many would believe it because people see me as an intellectual person who is quick to learn the ropes. But that's only the facade of Gemini sign. It's easy for me to sail through the surface, but I'm very slow to accept deeper lessons. It seems that I have read this quote so many times already:
"If a common man receives a strategy on how to achieve everything that his heart desires in 10 years, he will try to amend that strategy so that he could achieve the goal in 1 year, and as a result of that he will not achieve anything neither in 1 year nor in 10 years."
But only this month I fully understood that I was still repeating the same mistake. It doesn't matter how many times my trading mentor told me to reduce my risk - I still didn't do that. Because it seemed to me that it will take me so much time until I have the same level of capital as he has, which allows for stress-free trading at low risk. So I wanted to speed up the process. However, after spending a few dozens of hours analysing my previous year results and testing various scenarios, I understood something very important: the higher the risk, the weaker my raw performance (measured in pips) gets. Finally I proved to myself with data something that I had felt in my gut for quite a while - that by lowering the risk, my raw performance in pips will increase and the return in monetary terms will not be smaller! Also, while trading with smaller risk it becomes easier to objectively evaluate market conditions, I have more patience, less stress and emotions, therefore my health and quality of life gets better.
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Over the last few years I've been repeatedly facing the same conclusion that in business everything is important. Every detail is significant and it has to be taken care of. Even a single overlooked or consciously omitted detail will bounce back - it's only a question of when. When you're a salaried employee, you don't need to do everything at 100% quality. Because you will still get your salary. The bost might not even notice. And if he does notice, maybe someone else will fix that. But when you run your own business, behaving like that and expecting success is impossible. In trading the financial markets, the relationship between cause and effect reveals itself even faster than in many other fields of business.
If you jump into a trading position without much thought after a shallow evaluation or if you consciously ignore a certain rejection by your trading plan justifying yourself by saying "my intuition tells me it will be good" or "I've seen it before" or "I just want to make money" - the market will punish you for sure. It's very likely that as soon as after 5 minutes you will be regretting your decision and questioning yourself "how could I mess this up again, this opportunity was indeed bad". By the way, in these situations your Shadow Self, or the force of Resistance is in operation as well.
Intuition does indeed carry an important role while trading the financial markets (and in any business). But Intuition is easy to confuse with the whispers of your Shadow Self. I have noticed that there's a very short span of time during which the Intuition either comes online or not. It's about one second. The voices that come later are usually hallucinations of your mind. What do I mean by that?
While trading, when you look at the chart evaluating a new opportunity, it has to look good from your first look. If, within the first second, your inner voice is screaming to you that you have to act, then you only have to open your trading plan and do the mechanical evaluation based on your pre-set rules. If it matches - you open a trading position. These trades usually go without problems, but if they need correction along the way it's easy to implement them because you're relaxed, without having an internal conflict it's easy to see reality exactly as it is, accept it and adapt yourself while taking not more or less money than the market actually gives.
But if, after looking at a possible opportunity it doesn't "pop out" on the chart and you need to persuade yourself that this opportunity is good - in most cases it will be a bad opportunity. Being in such a trading position you will feel stress, look at the chart very often, think about various scenarios, prepare defence plans, miss other opportunities (which will actually be good) and in the end the result will not be enjoyable. It will be either a small profit (you will feel that you wasted your energy and time, the reward for that was not adequate), or a loss (you will comfort yourself that it was just a lesson, but remember that lessons are not learnt automatically and they repeat as many times as needed until you learn it completely).
However, in the beginning stages of trader's evolution you will not have Intuition. You will act only mechanically according to your rules (or breaking your rules). At this stage I don't recommend trading in large amounts or managing capital for other people. Intuition comes online with time. Be patient, work diligently and you will achieve everything that your heart desires. Thanks for reading.
