“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Mt.7:1-5, RSV).
What if you had a spate of almost continual losses while trading? You berate yourself without mercy. Then one night you have a dream of a condemned man sitting in a prison cell. What if you were asked, “Why is the man in prison?” You reply, “He must have done something horrible.”
But then you remember the words of Jesus, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” All of a sudden you realize “I condemned that man. I condemned myself by trading like I read I should trade.That type of trading led to my continual losses. I didn’t listen to my true inner voice.”
Every trader has an imprisoned part of his personality . . . at one point or another in his trading career. The inner convict has strong convictions. Yet, each bar of his prison is a trading “should.” You should trade like this. You should trade like that. Those shoulds make up the ”log” in the ego’s eye. The culturally conditioned ego needs to “. . . first take the log out of [its] own eye.”
When the ego removes the log, the ego can perceive the inner convict clearly. That convict contains the building blocks of your own trading style: independence of thought, intuition, courage, and other qualities unique to your personality. Free yourself. Embrace the natural trader within.
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