Epiphany

For the longest time, I've imagined that the solution to my trading struggles would present itself as nothing less than epiphany: a bolt of white lightning, an earth-shattering realization, a blinding, mind-bending revelation. And who could blame me for this fantasy? What else could possibly snap me out of years of repeating the same mistakes over and over, despite having a very explicit list of trading "rules" right in front of me, gleaned from countless hours in front of the market screen? What else could it be, having pored over endless pages of published trading "wisdom", only to find those words which sounded so sensible, so practical, just somehow couldn't translate into consistent action? My issues defied logical reckoning for so long that I was left with only blind faith in the eventuality that these demons would be exorcised at some point in my future -- a vague and desperate hope at best, yet I had no choice but to believe, for I had no other reason to perservere.

But looking back now from the other side, I have to admit that for me, there was no magic moment, no flash of enlightenment that chased away the shadows, nothing at all that remotely resembled any climactic turning point of realization. I can't really recall when the necessary changes were finally decided upon and implemented, but the one aspect I can identify that made things different was that the impetus for those changes came entirely from within. The force that finally had the power to put principle into action was instinctual in nature, as opposed to adaptive in respect to some external source, or merely reactive as backlash against my past transgressions. I wasn't blindly following some guru's Practical Guide to Trading, nor did I need to make the mistakes first before I knew how to anticipate and prevent them. The changes just fell into place, step by step, as things that I knew I needed to do to achieve my goals; they were nothing novel nor especially noteworthy, and endless variations of them can be found in any of the "classic" trading manuals. But this time they finally made sense to me, perhaps only because I came to the same conclusions in my own way.

So what could it have been that finally turned the whole damned ship around? I'm not absolutely sure yet, but the more I think about it, the closer I think I'm getting to figuring out the exact source. But I'll save that for another post.