After 6 years of trading, the market still tests my confidence. As traders, we study for hours, reading books, reviewing charts, analyzing setups. We put our heart and soul into this skill set. You go into the market feeling prepared and confident. The perfect setup presents itself, everything aligns, and you execute. Then the trade goes against you. You think, “WTF just happened?” You shake it off. Come back the next day ready to go. But then something similar happens. This time, you enter a trade with no confirmation. Or you enter slightly too soon. Those losses start to add up, and you have these moments where you question everything…… your strategy, your skills, whether you should even keep going. Even after 6 years, I still have those moments. Here’s what I’ve learned: You can’t control the triggers. Those moments where you do everything right and still lose? They will happen. Misplacing your stop loss, getting stopped out by a few ticks? It happens. You also can’t avoid the initial emotions, the fear, the frustration, the urge to revenge trade, the FOMO. Those are natural human reactions. But what we can control is how we respond to those emotions. We can choose whether we let those emotions settle in and fester, affecting how we show up the next trading day. Or we can take control and process them in healthy ways: ∙ Go for a walk ∙ Hit the gym ∙ Drink some water ∙ Get fresh air ∙ Do something fun with family and friends ∙ Take your mind off the charts The charts are just a small part of our world, they afford us the ability to do cool things, eat at nice restaurants, live the life we want. But they aren’t our entire life. Remind yourself why you trade in the first place. Then review your journal. Look at how many times you’ve backtested this strategy. Look at how many times it’s won. Trading is a game of probabilities. If you have a 70% win rate, that means out of 10 trades, you’re going to win 7 and lose 3. Those 3 losses are part of the plan, they don’t mean you’re not a good trader.