How You Trade Is How You Live

Trading is a lot like life.

It’s about making decisions in the face of an uncertain future, with few rules and where you’re in full control of your actions.

Just like life, trading is what you make of it.

It can be spontaneous or planned, stressful or relaxing, opportunistic or strategic.

What’s your trading like?

What Your Trading Says About Your Life

Here’s something to consider: how you run your trading operation is similar to how you run your life.

In trading, do you always plan ahead and know exactly what you’ll be doing?

Or do you just “see how it goes” and figure things out when the time comes?

Either way, that’s probably how you’re living your life too.

Do you trade with technical indicators simply because that’s what everyone else is doing? If so, perhaps your life choices are also influenced by what everyone else is doing.

When you really think about it, you’ll start to find that life and trading have a lot in common.

Making Money

Would you say a person is living a good life, simply because he/she makes a lot of money?

I mean, there are plenty of wealthy people with poor health. Or wealthy people with no time for vacations, or to spend with their loved ones.

In life, it’s pretty clear that “making money” isn’t all there is to it.

So why is it that in trading, it’s often the only thing people focus on?

More Than Money

If our aim in life is more than just “making money”, why should our trading be any different?

In looking for a job, we don’t just consider the salary – we also consider the working hours, and how stressful the job is.

But in choosing a trading method, do we consider how stressful it may be, or how much time we’d have to spend watching charts?

Trading Can Become Just Another Job

Years ago when I first started trading, all I cared about was the money.

So I spent my time and energy on intraday trading, mostly because I wanted instant gratification, and that it was what everyone else was doing.

And it wasn’t until I found myself sitting at the doctor’s office, being told I had developed a stomach ulcer (before I was even 30), that led me to realize this was not how I wanted things to be for the rest of my life.

How You Trade Is How You Live

I’ve said many times that trading is not an activity – it’s a way of life.

There are people who are willing to sacrifice a large portion of their health and time for money, and if that’s what they want, I can respect that.

All I’m saying is that it’s not what I want for myself.

There is a better way to be trading, but it takes time.

And luckily for me, this means that I can take a relaxed, considered approach to my trading.

Gone are the days where I’d panic for hours, over a sudden 50-pip move that came out of nowhere.

At the time, I didn’t realize that trading could cost anything more than time and money – I only found out (much) later that it could also cost a whole lot of frustration and emotional pain.

So if you haven’t really thought about how you’d want to run your trading operation, take this opportunity to do just that.

How much time, effort and energy would you like to spend on your trading? I’d like to know. Tell me in the comments below.