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Self sabotage is one of the most talked about, and yet most misunderstood, concepts of trading psychology.
The term itself - "self sabotage" - is a negatively-charged term, that brings out unnecessary feelings of self-judgement, shame and inadequacy, thus holds people back from dealing with the issue and solving it.
The reality is that EVERYBODY self-sabotages in many areas of life, all the time, and trading is no different.
A better professional term for this phenomenon is "SECONDARY GAIN".
What actually goes on is that we are subconsciously, yet purposefully SACRIFICING OUR TRADING RESULTS in order to achieve ANOTHER, MORE IMPORTANT GAIN.
We may try to be getting more out of trading than just the money.
For example, if we're in it for the action.
Or if we need to feel like a genius and take remarkable trades to show off.
Or if we've messed up our financial life, and are pressured to "make it already" and do right by our old self, our family etc.
Other times, we're protecting ourselves from negative implications of success.
For example, we may fear the vultures in the family raiding us once we make money, or our spouse and kids going on ravish spending trips and digging us even deeper in the "need to make money" cycle.
Or we may be afraid of becoming "mean and manipulative" like our uncle did when he became rich.
Or fear the emptiness and loneliness we may feel should we succeed, quit our job and become full-time traders.
Either way, self sabotage is not "a mental disorder". It's the mind's way of solving a MORE IMPORTANT problem - using your trading mistakes as a tool in the process.
Like a friend of mine once said, "if you keep doing the same stupid thing over and over again, there's likely a reason why you are doing it."
Once we figure out the reason for self-sabotage, it tends to work itself out rather quickly.
The second thing in this game is that sometimes people don’t believe it’s possible, even when they’re engaged in it, in the early stages.
That’s why it’s important to connect with people who are actually traders. I was able to do this by connecting to actual traders who traded on the Chicago pit floors via Twitter. I connected with them and I learned from them, from their tweets, and from there I connected with others who were also actual normal traders and knew what they were doing.
It let me know that yes this is possible, it is a profession, that there are people doing it.
But most importantly, these actual traders, stressed the time and effort required to start to see those patterns and the important of developing your own process.
And particularly what was interesting was for me was hearing their stories. THE PAIN!
This reinforced to me that yes I can take this path and yes, it is possible, and yes, I can do it.
It also reinforced my commitment and my freedom to pursue this because success is not guaranteed. But if I build my own process and go through that gauntlet, I can be closer to my objectives.
Success sometimes is a scary thing, because it is a state change. It is a change of your state from what you were to what you could become. That is frightening to a lot of us in an UNCONSCIOUS way.
Imagine being one state for the longest time, and then experiencing a state change, It’s so frightening that we revert back, we self sabotage
And that’s why we remain where we are.
Chaos at one level of magnification is harmony at a higher level of magnification.
So don't hate me for this, I'm on the fence about it, but I thought this was such an important topic that I wanted to make a shorter blurb summarizing the points here. Can maybe be shared with others. Used that new fangled Ai chat stuff the kids be talking about. Yes, it probably loses something in translation but makes it easier to digest.
