The Stage of Trading That All Traders are Trying to Reach - Episode 202

Everything we've talked about in the last few episodes in this arc has been just honest and open conversation of the reality of the business. From the isolation that traders are surprised to experience to the stages of progress and growth and finally the cost of everything that you're giving to do this trading thing. Well, today's episode is literally what the opposite side of that looks like. Once you make it over the hill, what is the destination of this entire trading thing that you're hoping to get to or already are at? And it's full of surprises as well. This isn't the fantasy version. This is the reality and it's better than the fantasy version. This is episode 202. This is Mind Over Markets and I'm George Papasoft. Let's dive into today's show. Trade pros. Welcome to Mind Over Markets. I'm George Papazoff, founder and CEO of Trade Pro Academy, which also sponsors this podcast. I've been trading since 2001, spent 5 years as a licensed trader at a trading desk. On this podcast, we're covering both trading psychology, order flow analysis, and the institutional edge that separates consistent traders from everyone else. Check out Trade Pro Academy. So, let's begin this discussion by what clicking actually means. You know, it's starting to click for me. It's starting to happen. It's starting to move forward. It's progressing. It's not a moment where everything becomes easy. It's not the moment that we're looking for through the other side of the hill. It's literally a moment where you realize oftent times long before the moments happen, you really you sit there and you think to yourself and you realize that the hard parts about trading, they stop feeling threatening. You're no longer riding this roller coaster of emotion of hope to then excitement to failure to picking yourself up off the floor and you know outright desperation and depression. It's more balanced out and you stop fighting the market. It's really a nice feeling. you stop fighting against it. You start moving with it and you start working with what it gives you. It's one of those feelings where you don't know what's going to happen and you're confident that happen, but you're confident that you're when you do find out, you'll make the right decision. You're confident in yourself to navigate the storm every single day. You're confident in your plan. execution. And this is where really uncertainty starts to become an interesting thing because the uncertainty of trading doesn't ever go away. You just stop needing it to go away. You adjust to the process of dealing with uncertainty. The only certainty you have in the business is that things are going to be uncertain, but you'll find your way through it. You did it before. it this time. And you know that the inner focus becomes the next trade, the next opportunity, analysis, sticking to the plan. and you've really cemented that and it becomes a process that you can't ever plan for, but it's easy to implement and you know what you need when and you're just going through the motions and you're flowing with it. It's such a beautiful thing, but the uncertainty never goes away. By the point you hit this kind of performance in your trading, you're going to realize something. Nothing's really that uncertain anyways in life. The way that you adjust with the uncertainty in trading, the spillover effect in other areas of your life is you don't expect to have certainty anywhere else as well. You know, you'll go to the doctor. I remember in 2020 when I was diagnosed with a DVT, you know, she said, "Well, the I went in for an ultrasound and the lady's looking at my leg and she says, you know, you're lucky you came in. You have very extensive DVT and a blood clot in your leg. You know, a lot of people with this extensive of a blood clot, their first symptom is death because it turns into pulmonary embism and they don't realize until it's too late. She's like, "You should be very happy that you're walking out of here on your own. " I said that, you know, you just never know. I'm like, "I should be happy, but maybe some other people won't be. " She's like, "Sir, I don't. " She got a little offended because at the end of the day, I made a joke out of it. But look, I don't take this life thing too seriously because it's the same thing in trading. There's no certainty in anywhere. You could literally do everything that you think needs to happen in order for you to reach something in life and you get the complete opposite. The end of the day, trading is the same. You know, everything's uncertain and rather than stress yourself out to plan the future or regret the past, you really have a welloiled mechanism to just exist peacefully in the moment in the now. That's what the other side of trading does for you. The trading and the takeaways of the technical aspect are the least beneficial thing you're going to get out of this. You have this way of staying present, existing in the moment, in the now in a calm way, knowing that everything is going to be okay. No matter what gets thrown your way, you're going to react to it according to your values and your identity. That's the beautiful part. The mornings in this life with trading as well are different. You wake up, the first thought isn't, oh

my goodness, it's anxiety. I'm going to have to put the capital on. I had a big losing day yesterday. I'm going to lose again. This is so tough. the Iranian US situation is creating unpredictability in the markets. Oh, what's Nvidia earnings doing today? You don't have to go through those motions anymore. You wake up into preparation. You know what you got to do. You just got to go through the steps. Now, it's preparation. It's not fear. There's a routine. There's a rhythm that you've built in. You know what you're looking for before the open. You know what data to find. You know what spreadsheet to put it in. You know what the result tells you. You know exactly what decides if it's going to be an upday or a down day. You know where you're going to transition on the long to the short. You know exactly what you're waiting for in the order flow pattern. You know the exact moment and what the pattern looks like. You know exactly what to do and how to manage the trade. These things aren't technical things cuz you probably know them now technically. But understanding them and how they flow into one another and the patterns and the rhythm of it, it puts you almost in a hypnosis state. Like when I'm trading, I'm in a constant hypnosis state. I see people on streams going live and trading and texting on their phone and I don't have time to text on the phone. I've never ever been on my phone while I've been trading. Not once in 20 plus years of doing this because there's so much that I'm focusing on and so much energy I'm putting in to find the right information, but even more so in energy to dismiss the wrong information to keep myself present in the moment. When I trade, the first warning sign for me is shifting out of my timeline. Going for the future, aka anticipating profits or going to the past and regretting losses. Both of that is shifting out of your power window of the now. So, every morning is different. The day that you wake up into with the trading has structure. You built the structure, right? It's on your terms. You've created the structure. That alone is something most people don't have in their working life. And when they get a taste of it, they find it really difficult to manage. just sit back, chill, relax, be in the moment, and trust yourself. You're at the controls when you're needed, trust that you're going to do the right thing. The morning routine and structure is one thing that carries from your successful trading to all aspects of life. For example, when I was a younger kid and I just got my driver's license, I liked speed. I had motorcycles. I wanted to go fast for the enjoyment of going fast. In this day and age, I find it hard to speed cuz I'm never in a rush. I don't rush to get into a trade. I'm not going to go rush to somewhere where I'm not being paid. Does that make sense? Like I see people in South Florida driving crazy and fast and swerving for traffic. And I'm like, I wouldn't even drive like that if I was late to a place that pays me. Most people are driving like crazy going places to spend money. So, you have this calmness and awareness in life that you just get to experience life more fully. I don't know how to explain it to other than like the spices taste spicier, the sweets taste like sweeter. You're really absorbing the true full potential of life once you're in that trading mindset. And yes, it's morning routine, but it's so much more than that. It's just an identity, a way of life that you come to accept. That's on the other side of the hill of the stages of trading. The other big thing that happens is your relationship with losing starts to change. Now, this one's very important. Losses in trading stop being verdicts and they start being information for you. Let me give you an example. You'll have a losing trade and that trade typically would set you off emotionally to avenge it and do another 20, 30 trades and blow out the account yet again. In this new trader identity, you look at the loss and you just you're indifferent to it. You're saying, "Eh, I'm going to do this for the next 10 years. What does any one single trade how much could it potentially affect the outcome of what I'm doing as a career choice on one single event like one trade? So if one trade doesn't matter then one trade will never matter and you're always pushing forward to the next trade and you're going through the reps and motions with the routine and now with this new sense of relationship to what losing really means. You start looking at losses as data not only in trading but in life. the moments where these losses have spiraled you for months at a time of losing yourself and traveling to Australia to find yourself, quote unquote, you'll find yourself right away cuz you never do lose yourself. And the truth is, you are responsible for how you react to anything that's introduced into your circle. Somebody can't make you mad. Somebody could present their information and their personality to you, and you can choose to be mad, but you still choose it to be mad at them. you could just as easily choose to leave. Just like some people will go in and write the nastiest comments on YouTube. We don't get them very often, but we still get them once in a while. And I laugh and I say, you know what, that's actually kind of sad because it was just as easy to go to something that you do want than to dwell in the thing that you don't quote unquote like. Letting people hear your opinion of why you don't like this, it's putting

yourself as a victim. And I feel sorry for that. I'm sad for it. But when you're trading, your relationship with loss, your relationship with challenge and failure completely shifts and changes. You know that any one opportunity isn't going to turn your whole life upside down or change it positively. You know that every opportunity is just another trade. So you're going to be in situations where you're going to take a loss and your friends are going to think it's an enormous loss. Not trading related. It could be a game. relationship. It could be some money that you invested with a friend or a partnership and it might be small or big money but you're going to just say, "Eh, we gathered some data, didn't we? " And they're going to think you're nuts cuz I've walked away from a $250,000 losing investment on that exact same energy literally overnight. I'm like, "I I hate all this. I've gathered all the information that I need. " All right, it's a loss. Charge it to the game. Like, what? You don't want to try to do option B and C and D now that you're this far down the road? I'm like, nope. I went down the road far enough as I cared to. I wanted to do this and now I don't. And the moment I don't want to do something, I don't need to do anything. anything other than breathe, eat, sleep, and survive. The moment I lose my want, I'm out. And that happens with your relationship with loss and trading. But in life, you're going to change as a person. And I'm warning you about this right now. You're going to change as a person, and you're going to become less relatable to everyone around you. Now, your circle will change. You'll find more value in relationships of having communities like ours. Things are different. Don't you for a second think that you could become a high performer and maintain habits of a non-performer. A bad trade won't bleed into the next one in trading. That's beautiful. You can close the screen and come back clean. You don't have to force it. lock yourself out. I had someone in the community that create a lockout indicator for Sierra Charts that you can't defeat even if you shut it down and turn it back on. You can't unlock your trading account for 15 minutes. You don't need all that. Don't want to lock yourself from yourself. All right? It's just discipline. All right? It's part of the plan. And this is the emotional freedom people are actually chasing when they say they want to trade for a living. It's your relationship to change. It's your ability to just relax and be calm. People think it takes all this enormous wealth to live present in the moment and in the now. I'm going to tell you the opposite is probably more true than ever. If you do live in the moment now, first and foremost, you'll see the opportunities will bring you the wealth you're seeking. It took me so long to get to this understanding and I wish these things were taught in school. Now, everything we've talked about in this arc sounds good, but how do you actually get there? And this sounds like a dream, like a pipe dream. The shift here isn't going to happen by accident. You're not going to walk into it and one day wake up. It happens through repetition and also through the right behaviors that you put in. All right? And that's what this 9020 framework is all about that I want to present you. So, what is 9020? It's a simple premise. You execute your plan at 90% discipline over the span of 20 days. And it seems like a simple challenge. It's not. But the outcome is just super powerful. You'll start to recalibrate and change who you are as a person and how you look at things. This is all you have to do. It's sustainable. It's measurable. It's real. 20 days is long enough for pattern formation and creation. It's long enough for the chemistry in your brain to change. It's long enough for your values to realign. It's long enough. The good news is I'm going to walk you through my own prop account experience with this 9020 challenge. and I'm going to show you what it led to, what it created, and how you could replicate this process and the exact same steps in your own account. June 9th at 8:00 p. m. Eastern, that's next Tuesday from hearing this podcast, I'm inviting you to a free event. It's a webinar, and what we're going to talk about is exactly that. I'm going to introduce the 9020 framework for you, give you some context, give you some challenges and takeaways, and give you the exact plan on how to do this challenge to get the most benefit out of it, which it won't change your trading. It'll change your life first and your trading as a result. Join us June 9th at 8:00 p. m. Eastern. The link is in the show notes and I'm really excited for this event. Let's get back to the webinar right now, though. Many people get sold on the lifestyle of trading before they even know what it really is, right? They'll get sold on somebody else's lifestyle trading and they say, "Oh, that looks kind of nice. I don't have any of these things and if I did, I would probably be just as important and cool as them. Let me buy their course. " What does a lifestyle really give you? Strip away the rented Lamborghinis. Maybe you even own them. The own Lamborghinis, which is a terrible financial decision, but nonetheless, if it brings you joy, it's not all about financial decision either. All the houses, all the flossy crazy like crap, all the watches, like take all that crap out. It's literally nothing. It's Adam's group together. What does it actually look like for this lifestyle? What is the most advantageous thing for you? You know, driving around in a Lamborghini in the middle of the night feels cool for a couple of days, couple of weeks, couple of months. Heck, you could probably stretch it out a couple of empty years in your life, but you really know deep down that's not going to last. This is what that lifestyle actually looks like. You get flexibility. It's not leisure.

You still get to work hard and you have to work hard, but you control when and how. You feel sick for one day, there's no one to call in sick to. You feel off and you're like, "Eh, I don't really know. Something's not right. " You take the day off. Your son has a piano recital, wife has to do this, you could take a day off. You just wake up one morning and say, "I want to go back to bed. " You get to do it. That's the leisure and the flexibility. Obviously, you're going to have to work some days, right? But you don't have to work all days. And you're only working 2 to three hours a day. That's all you need to catch that one good opportunity. You scale in, scale up, scale out, enjoy your day. The afternoon is yours. That's the part that really created the business out of my own trading is in the afternoon. I was like, I love the markets. I want to be around them a little bit more. Let me start out with some commentary. Oh, wow. The people like the commentary. Let me put together a course. I'm getting a lot of questions. Oh, well, people like the course. You know, I'm trading by myself from 9 to like 11:30. It'd be nice to get a couple traders in there to trade with me. All right, we're trading together. Well, one of the guys says, "Hey, I have a friend that wants to kind of just watch for a little bit. Is it cool? " Yeah, bring that friend in. Then we have 30 friends. Now these friends are like, "Well, what about this? What happens when this happens? " Like, "Well, now I'm doing everything for free. I'll charge you a small fee. " And this is how this kind of product offering builds up. It happened out of necessity. I started the business in 2012. I've been trading since 2001. That's kind of the spillover effect it creates. The afternoon is yours and you can do with it whatever you want. I choose to participate in this side of the business. To be honest with you, I don't know if I will forever. I really don't. In the afternoon, you could very easily choose to go play hockey. That's what I do a lot of time. You could easily go choose to be with your kids and spend more time with them. That's what I do as well. In a lot of the afternoons, I only really work Monday to Thursday in the trading room. And then I'll do a little bit of content on Monday and I send it to Mikey and he chops it up, makes it look amazing. I do some customer support stuff. I'll write an article when I feel like writing it. My SEO guy gets to work. Like really, I built a team and I only get to work 9 to 11 Monday to Thursday. Those are the only hours I'm tied to because I'm part of the trading room. And then th Friday I'm off. I'll take some trades, but they're more chill kind of trades. And then the afternoon I'm mostly with my kids anyways. Getting to spend the best years of my life with my kids on a daily basis. My kids are homeschooled. They don't go to school. They don't, you know, they go they learn at home. It's not like they don't school. They just homeschool. And I get to be with them. And it's the days right now I know I'm going to look back in the future and even though I have more time to do whatever the heck I want. I'm going to look back on these days and miss them. I'm living the days now that I know I'll miss in the future. So I'm living them with extra awareness and presence. And that to me is very important for my afternoons. You'll get a chance to do whatever you want in your afternoons. If you're a really great trader, you don't need to trade all day. If you're a really great trader, it'll eventually become something that the trading funds another business, another passion, another project, something else that moves you. Be it gives you love or gives you time or gives you something gives you money, gives you fulfillment. You'll find something other than trading one day. I promise you, you will. You stop measuring success by the day and start measuring it by the month. You know, one day doesn't really matter. By the quarter, by the year, heck, by the decade, right? When if you're in the business long enough. If you have a small account or a big account, the lifestyle is the same once the process is solid. I'm just now getting into trading prop firm accounts and it doesn't feel that different. You know, it honestly doesn't. I'd love to tell you, wa these things changed and here's what I realized after. It's just an account. It's not that big of a deal or difference whether you're selfunded or on prop. It's really the psychological takeaway that we extract from that experience that makes it one more challenging or the other different times your journey. That's what the lifestyle actually looks like. It's great. Now, this is who you become. You're going to become disciplined. patient. You're going to have the ability to sit with discomfort. And it shows up everywhere in your life, not just in trading. People on the outside, you relate very quickly to high performers. And the high performers in public without them identifying to you will stick out just like that, like a sore thumb. You'll listen. You'll be filtering out most of the conversation cuz you don't want to hear all that stuff. You got your own thoughts. And then you hear the words of somebody that says something. and you look at them like that's one of my people. You'll hear them so quickly and those are people you didn't know existed before on this side of the hill. It gives you this like this ability to just be chill, to be present, to be okay with uncertainty, to be positive mindset, but it also makes you less relatable. Most people deal in the world of needs. They need this, they need that, they need this. But need is a scarcity mindset. And when you need something, when some when you say, "Oh, I need this. " Because you have to justify it. When you want something, you don't have to justify it to anyone, including yourself. You're like, "Oh, well, like, you know," and I'll tell you, you know what I want? Like, what do you want, George? I really want to have an ice rink, a full hockey ice rink in

my house. I'm looking at some houses with an ice rink in it. Why would you want that? I don't have to tell you. What do you mean? Why would I want that? Why wouldn't you want that? You don't want a hockey rink in your house? I don't need it. I want it. And I'm only focused in life at this part of the hill on things that I want. And I don't care whatsoever to justify it to anyone. It's the beauty of it. I want it. I'm going for it. Or I want it. How badly do I want it? Maybe now, maybe later. I prioritize these things that I want, but I never justify it to myself or to anyone that asks. Now, you're going to start to network and meet people like that. your relationships are going to start to change because you become less relatable to most people, but you become more relatable to a very small select group of super high performers. And it's really hard for the two of you when you get into a room to not just snap together and magnetize and talk. All right. The amount of successful people I've met after becoming a trader that aren't even in the same industry with me that when we're in the same room, we magnetize each other is is pretty scary. Cool. It's like, what do you do? I kind of felt like I should say hello. Yeah. Felt your energy too. Happy we connected. What do you do? Oh, I'm a professional blah athlete. trader. We kind of do similar things. You just look better than me. So, these kind of dialogues, it life is fascinating for so many more reasons than the trading aspect. But yeah, be prepared. Your relationships will change. You know, you're not carrying the weight of the market and like the weight of struggling with performance. You're on the want mindset. You're done with the need. You're on the want mindset and the world is yours with that mindset. You make better decisions in the market outside of trading as well because trading has really taught you how to think under pressure and most situations that people are afraid of are situations in which you shine. So you kind of secretly quietly start seeking out these situations cuz you're comfortable in it or they seem to find you more cuz people will put you in these situations cuz they can't handle it. They know you can. So they'll volunteer you. Volunte. I like that word to be in these situations and you're okay with it. You might not even notice it's a situation that other people are afraid of or are even looking up to you for approaching. You know, I work with this with my son a lot. I try to get him to go and say and do things that he thinks are uncomfortable. His brother was at martial arts and his brother needed to use the bathroom. I could tell. And I said, "Go get him. Go get your brother and bring him to the bathroom. " And there's a whole class going on and the parents are like all focusing. There's a lot of attention. And it's one of those things where it's like it feels tough cuz you're going to have to interrupt something. And I'm like, "Your brother's going to pee himself. Go get him. " And he's like, "No, daddy, you get it. " I just stood up and I was like, "Hey, excuse me. " Everyone just looks. I don't care. Got to get my kid. I'm like, "Can I please have Xavier for a second? He needs a bathroom break. " The teacher's like, "Go ahead, Xavier. We'll I'll wait for you until you're done. " And the whole martial arts class waited for my son to finish his bathroom break so he could come back and they could restart. How beautiful is that? That would have never happened if you quietly were just like waving him in. You just have to express yourself. Who cares what the world thinks about you? They're going to think worse things of you when you're trying to please them. I promise you. The reality is this that I want to conclude with, right? The market has changed you. you a lot to somebody who could think under pressure. Somebody who's comfortable and certainty. Somebody who expects high performance of them. Somebody who doesn't stray out of their framework. Someone who makes decisions based on information. Somebody who's not compulsive. Somebody who's more logical, analytical, more calm-minded. Somebody who's present in the moment. somebody other people want to be around. It's going to change you. The market is going to create a new version of you and you have to decide you're okay with that because if you're not, you'll never get to that place. And a lot of trading psychology issues are just success mindset and fear of success. It sounds weird, but more people have fear of success than failure, believe it or not. And they're rooted in the same thing. You have to decide that the version of you that's going to be a high performer is welcome in your life. You have to decide you're okay with that version. Because if your values and morals and the way you've been programmed look at that person as somebody who you don't want to be, well, you'll never be a successful trader. Because the reality is the people who are successful in trading could have picked up knitting. They could start knitting and they would have succeeded in knitting. I don't know, they could pick up playing hockey in their 40s and they'll be a pretty freaking good hockey player and you'll be like, "What the heck is going on? " And before you know it, they open up a hockey pro shop of an NHL player in Doris. Like, how did this guy do it? I've been playing the game my whole life. That's the kind of people that succeed. person that you're going to become. Whether you like it or not, if your goal is to get on the other side of that hill of trading, the least benefit you're going to realize with trading success is the success of trading income. That's the least benefit. That's going to pay your bills. It's going to unlock opportunities for you. It's going to give you stability and safety, but it's not going to be what tickles your fancy, and you'll have to find that out. And I hope that you do. The full picture is this. The cost was real. The time that you put in, the money, the identity

crisises that we go through with these account blowouts and really tormenting moments trying to figure out our success mindset and how to rewire ourselves. The stages are all real. All five of them. Every single one of them is a real stage and phase that we have to get through. Some of them we go back to and progress forward. And this is real, too. The other side of this is real as well. And the other side of it, and the truth of it all is that it's not really as marketable as you would want it to be. It really isn't because the benefits you're going to get on the other side are almost not worth starting today if they're not dressed up with the Lamborghini, with all this stuff. So, I love it. Carry on trading industry. Keep selling signals in Discord rooms and floss with your Ferraris because hey, at least it's going to get people into something that could end up being a career. The long game pays. Not everyone collects. It's the reality. But the ones who stay honest and stay the course and stay on the path are the ones that end up collecting. are then collecting not to profit from the market right away but the biggest benefit all is to become a high performer to really unleash yourself and free yourself from the matrix like you take the pill that there's no going back from for Morpheus in the Matrix movies and there's no going back for real that's it four episodes one arc we're concluding the series with the lifestyle and the path of being a traitor this is the unfiltered version of it if you're in this journey now you know what's to come ahead now that you know some of the stages. Everyone's journey looks different. These are common things and a lot of them are unique to my experience throughout this entire trading journey as well. You're going to find your own things, but you know what kind of the arc and the timeline looks like. If you're in the middle now, you know you're not alone. If you're on the other side, you kind of already know everything in this arc is true. You probably be nodding your head this whole time. Your neck hurts from nodding to these episodes. The end of the day, no matter what stage you're at, keep going because it's worth it. There's always more to discover. work on and mindset is always one of the most important things. Like take a look at this. I think I have one of the strongest mindsets of well me personally relative to myself. I have the strongest mindset I've ever had my entire life. And I'm still reading a book that promises me how to 10x my mindset rather than 2x. Once you grow and you understand that you're comfortable being uncomfortable, there's no other option but to continuously grow and expand. That's how I am at everything in life. I don't just play hockey. I'm 41 years old trying to get better. People said, you know, you're not going to make the NHL, right? I'm like, you know, I'm not going to do something that I don't keep getting better at, right? Life is too short to be the same at anything for more than one day. Love you guys. Have a great rest of your day. Hope you enjoy this podcast. Next week, we're starting a new series. I'm excited to dive into it with you. And quick reminder, webinar June 9th at 8:00 p. m. Eastern. Link in the show notes of this episode. Get in there, get your seat. We're going to talk about how to get funded and stay funded at Proper. Hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please like and comment on the episode and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. I would greatly appreciate it. It helps us reach a wider audience, reach more people, and help more traders. Love you all. I'll see you in the next episode. Take care and goodbye. — Quick disclaimer. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss is not suitable for all investors. Nothing here's financial advice. You're responsible for your own decisions. Don't trade with capital you can't afford to lose.