27 Sep Road to becoming a trader

Road to becoming a trader

In these series I will most­ly rant. I feel rant­i­ng for me puts a lot of things into per­spec­tive. Also, the mere fact of nam­ing things helps me to clear things up. After which, I can draw my con­clu­sions and take action. These series are going to be about just that. A bunch of redun­dant words and sen­tences say­ing the same thing (see what I did there? 🙂 ) These are changes I need to make in my per­son­al life in order to facil­i­tate my goal of becom­ing a trad­er. Changes I feel I already know I need to make but aren’t always easy to fol­low through on. So let’s start rant­i­ng and let’s get going with fol­low­ing our dreams. 

DISCLAIMER

Click here for my dis­claimer. It basi­cal­ly says that I am on my path to becom­ing a trad­er and these are just my opin­ions on how to approach learn­ing to trade. Feel free to check it out and com­ment on it. Or not. Up to you really. 

Here it goes…

It’s all my fault

In order to fol­low my dreams I have to make sac­ri­fices. Just today I was watch­ing, my man, Gary Vayn­er­chuk. For those that don’t know, please check out his ‘rants’ on YouTube. Gary Vee was talk­ing to some kid about how to cut through the shit and just be hon­est. Hon­est with what you’re doing and hon­esty to oth­ers. The truth will set you free 🙂 This res­onat­ed with me because for a long time I felt out of place with peo­ple because I seem to be dif­fer­ent. I seem to ‘rub’ them in the wrong way at times, even though I mean well. But mean­ing well and still hav­ing a neg­a­tive out­come is still a possibility. 

Me Me Me!

Me being me thought to change me in order to not be me around peo­ple so that me would be more accept­ed. Until I saw anoth­er video by Gary Vee say­ing that ‘you know what?! FUCK IT!’. This is me. I take that as the fol­low­ing. I know I mean well. I know I fuck up at times at mean­ing well. But you know what?! Fuck it!. If you are too sen­si­tive to deal with that, that’s OK. I’m gonna do Me. You do You. 

Do the GaryVee

This is my way of show­ing hon­esty in the things that I am doing and want to do. I under­stand that in order to become the best me, I have to do and not do cer­tain things. Things that I feel obstruct me the most is, well me. It’s the ‘Me’ that looks at cer­tain fac­tors in a cer­tain way that stand in my way of achiev­ing my goals. So here is the ‘Me’ look­ing at peo­ple and friends. 

“Friends”

So let’s talk about friends. A great TV sit­com I enjoyed in some of my for­ma­tive years. But that’s not what I wan­na talk about of course. Often we mis­take peo­ple that we sur­round our­selves with for friends. I do have the audac­i­ty to speak not just for myself but for you too. There! Take it! Or maybe it’s just that I am too biased because I have such shit­ty friends. Nah, that’s not it either. It’s just my per­cep­tion of friends. In order to know what a friend is you need to clar­i­fy what that means to you per­son­al­ly. I can’t do that for you, but I can tell you how I look at it. In your life you will prob­a­bly only have one hand­ful of actu­al friends. If you are tru­ly blessed, you’ll have two hand­fuls. I am in my thir­ties now so take that into con­sid­er­a­tion. What I mean by true friends is that per­son that will go beyond him- or her­self to help you. Even offer with­out you ask­ing them. Sup­port you when you need it. Laugh with you. Talk with you. Actu­al­ly lis­ten to you with­out judg­ing. All those oth­ers are just peo­ple you know. Peo­ple you can hang out with. No prob­lem. Sat­is­fy your group (cough herd) men­tal­i­ty with. No prob­lem. I have that need too at times. But for the most part, it’s just not me. I have always enjoyed being alone. Being alone makes me calm. Makes me feel good because I get to do the things I want to do. Whether it be what­ev­er project I am cur­rent­ly work­ing on or like now, learn­ing to trade. I have nev­er felt the need for a group of friends, although that sit­com ‘Friends’ does make it look real­ly good. 

Putting it into perspective

So why am I talk­ing about ‘friends’? I find myself some­how loy­al to cer­tain peo­ple that actu­al­ly show no loy­al­ty towards me. This seems to be a recur­ring theme in my life. I rather have a few good friends here and there then to fol­low the herd and be good with every­one. Espe­cial­ly when work­ing towards your goals you under­stand that your time is very lim­it­ed. Lim­it­ed means that you have to pick and choose where you spend your time on. I think that’s only fair. It’s just that when you stop see­ing peo­ple they some­how take it per­son­al­ly. Don’t wor­ry about that. Peo­ple that can’t see what you are doing is for your own ben­e­fit you don’t real­ly need in your life anyway. 

Trans­late into real life

There are cer­tain things I have to do in order to get ahead in achiev­ing my goals. One of them is active­ly trad­ing dur­ing the week. The best times to trade at my loca­tion is dur­ing Mon­day till Fri­day in the evenings from 7 till about mid­night. This means I can’t hang out with any­one in those times. Not even with friends. Because my goals super­sede my friends in terms of pri­or­i­ty. Although there are some spe­cial cir­cum­stances that need me to change my sched­ule from time to time. How­ev­er, they may nev­er be too fre­quent. Con­sid­er it as one cheat day a month.

THANK YOU

As always, I hope that some­one some­where learns some­thing from my expe­ri­ences on the road to becom­ing a trad­er. Please share your thoughts, neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive, down below or con­tact me by email.