Recognition — Part 3

Clarity, Humiliation, and the Nature of Envy

We often assume some deeper, character-altering change is required to “become” a better trader, but in my experience and from that of those I’ve learned from, you can’t go from average to exceptional, or even just to above average, merely by trying to manifest that change through positive thinking or affirmation. Or by assuming that change will take place naturally, that you will simply evolve as if you are already built for the environment as opposed to the fact that you are more likely to be naturally selected out of the market over time if you do not learn how to adapt.

Before I get to what I found the solution to be, it is vital to understand what the problem is. Why exactly do we assume that we need to change, and what is that assumption based on? What is it about ourselves exactly that we are attempting to change to achieve success? And more importantly, what is success?

Put simply, we assume we need to change because we’re measuring ourselves against people we’ve decided are above us.

Envy is not just a feeling to be managed, despite what some psychology gurus may try to sell you. Envy is a misperception of reality — it occurs when we let ourselves become the center of what determines our worth and when we treat success as something measured by comparison. The idea that what others gain, you lose, isn’t just psychologically painful. It’s not how any of this actually works, it is categorically false.

Trading, and life in general, is not a zero sum or finite game. Regardless of your personal thoughts on the afterlife, the free will of the individual and the combined wills of all those participating in life, and in markets, are an evergreen and ongoing phenomenon. Furthermore, if it is true that success is qualified by monetary gain, and that it is true that the potential for gain is limited, the only person who can be considered truly successful is the single person who would eventually end up with all of the gain and only after every other player had been eliminated. When taken to it’s full logical conclusion this view is entirely incoherent, and yet we adhere ourselves to some perceived “path” of progress because we aren’t at the conclusion, we’re stuck in the middle of it.

You have only just gotten here, and there is nothing but opportunity around you. Your worth as a human being is not determined by monetary success, or even by the skills you develop and put on display. However, the human psyche has a nasty habit of treating desired outcomes (once they are recognized as a real possibility) as a foregone conclusion. Once we see “success” as a possibility, everything short of that feels like a robbery. Couple this with a faulty view of what success actually is and you’re doomed from the start.

For me, success in this new light becomes like life and markets itself. An ongoing and everlasting process by which I will continue to pursue truth and knowledge, until there is either nothing left to learn or until my capacity for learning is exceeded. My “success” as a trader becomes entirely irrelevant to that process by default. Markets are not “the Truth” and my knowledge (or lack thereof) of them is not a factor in my success in pursuing knowledge of myself and universe.

The reason we try to become like those who seem above us, and the reason this causes so much grief, is because of the faulty perception that those people are above us in some sense of their value as a human being. In that flawed mindset, those who are more “successful” are not just better than you at trading, they are better than you as a person (you don’t have to consciously or verbally admit this to suffer from it). This is the wound that needs to be healed, and that healing cannot occur not as a stoic form of refusal to surrender to the emotion, nor must that wound be allowed to fester and remanifest as a chip on the shoulder. These are merely coping mechanisms that allow the wound to grow, and remain open. Even worse, they avoid confrontation with the issue at hand.

The healing doesn’t come from merely thinking your way into a new perspective. It comes from doing the small, unglamorous work that gradually makes the old perspective untenable.

Instead of trying to do what I thought a better trader would do, I started focusing on the things that I was already doing and how they could be improved. Instead of trying to climb straight up to the ceiling, I started pushing away from what was keeping me on the floor.

When you sit down at the end of each session, or at the end of each week, your repeated mistakes leave you no room to hide.

You are forced to see what you’re doing wrong.

And more importantly, you are forced to see where the mistakes are coming from.

You must stop expecting results and start delivering them; regardless of them being positive or negative, you must deliver and review and deliver again. Until patterns emerge, and from these patterns your system, your edge, and your flaws will be revealed.

Clarity precedes competence, and most people unknowingly skip clarity because it’s humiliating. But within the process of constantly seeking that humiliation, clarity emerges.