You Start Remembering Yourself Differently

You’re looking for an old trade.

At least that’s why you opened the notebook.

You flip back a few pages.

Then a few more.

Three months.

Six months.

A year.

The handwriting gets messier in places.

Charts glued to pages with a glue stick you swiped from your 4-year-old.

Numbers circled.

Stops.

Targets.

Notes to yourself.

Then you stop.

There’s an entry you don’t remember writing.

Waited for my setup.
Took one trade.
Stop held.
Didn’t chase after it moved without me.

At the bottom:

Good day. Stayed with the plan.

You read it again.

Huh.

Keep flipping.

Another one.

Two losses. Done for the day.

A few pages later:

Wanted to move the stop. Didn’t. Took the loss.

Then:

No setup. No trade.

You sit there for a second.

Because lately, you’ve been telling yourself a different story.

I have no discipline.

You’ve said that one.

Maybe more than once.

I always move my stops.

I can’t hold winners.

I overtrade.

I don’t trust myself.

Sometimes you don’t even say them anymore.

They’re just there.

Things you know about yourself.

Like your height.

Your birthday.

Your name.

And apparently, the kind of trader you are.

It didn’t happen all at once.

You moved a stop.

Then did it again.

You took a trade you knew wasn’t yours.

Then another.

You promised yourself you’d stop after two losses.

Then took number three.

One bad week became two.

Then a month.

At some point:

I moved my stop again

became:

I always move my stops.

And eventually:

I’m terrible with stops.

That’s a small change in words.

It doesn’t feel small when you believe it.

You keep flipping through the notebook.

There are plenty of ugly pages.

Oh, they’re in there.

Trades you chased.

Rules you bent.

Days when you should have shut the computer down two hours earlier.

One entry has four words written across the bottom:

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

Yeah.

That sounds more familiar.

But that’s not all that’s there.

There are days you waited.

Days you took the loss.

Days you didn’t chase.

Days you followed the plan and still lost.

Days you traded well.

You had forgotten some of those.

Funny what sticks.

You don’t have to search very hard for the bad ones.

You remember the stop you moved.

The winner you cut short.

The trade you chased.

The morning you gave back everything you made.

Those come quickly.

The ordinary days are harder.

The stop you took.

The bad setup you passed on.

The afternoon you closed the platform when you said you would.

Nothing dramatic happened on those days.

Maybe that’s why you don’t visit them as often.

Somewhere along the way, the story changed.

Not the trading story.

Your story.

I took an extra trade today.

became:

I’m an overtrader.

I’ve been hesitating lately.

became:

I can’t trust myself.

You stopped describing something you did.

You started describing someone you are.

And once you do that enough, you don’t need the notebook anymore.

You already know how the story goes.

Except the notebook is sitting in front of you.

And apparently, the story is messier than you remembered.

You weren’t always disciplined.

You weren’t always undisciplined either.

You moved stops.

And sometimes you didn’t.

You chased trades.

And sometimes you watched them leave without you.

You broke rules.

And sometimes you followed them when every part of you wanted not to.

None of that erases what you’ve been doing lately.

The notebook doesn’t get you off the hook.

But it does leave you with a question.

You look again at that old entry.

Two losses. Done for the day.

You remember that rule.

You remember how hard it used to be.

Apparently, at least that day, you followed it.

A few pages later:

Wanted to move the stop. Didn’t. Took the loss.

You run your finger across the words.

Your handwriting.

Your trade.

Your decision.

Then you think about something you’ve told yourself more than once lately.

I’ve always been this way.

You look back at the page.

Then the next one.

And the next.

If you’ve always been this way…who wrote these?

_{Disclosure: Struggling Trader exists to share lessons, observations, and experiences from the markets. I’m here to help people think about trading, not tell them what to buy or sell. Every trader’s situation is different, and all financial decisions are ultimately your own responsibility. Markets carry risk, including the risk of losing money, so always do your own research before investing or trading.}