Gardening can be therapeutic in many ways. This is what came to my mind when I was watering the vegetables. I was just in my own head, listening to my thoughts, when suddenly one of them stood out:
“I really spent a lot of my life waiting for one BIG MOMENT when everything would change.”
You probably felt it too. I definitely did.
I always wanted to have the BIG moment in my life when something drastically changes overnight. The older I get, the more I realize it’s bullshit. Significant changes are usually built through consistency, not some acute change of circumstances. You probably won’t become a millionaire overnight. You won’t suddenly gain all the knowledge needed to become a scientist who cures cancer. I could continue with examples forever.
Big things just take time.
I asked myself why I used to think that way and why I wanted that moment so badly. Most likely, I wanted the praise or some kind of confirmation from others that what I was doing mattered. A big event is visible. People notice it. You can point at it and say, “See? This is why all of it was worth it.”
Consistency doesn’t give you that very often.
I took this thinking into trading as well, but I can now say that I don’t feel it nearly as much as I did before. I value consistency more than ever, but that only came with experience, I think. The more I failed and the more losses I took, the easier it became to focus on the long-term game instead of constantly waiting for something to happen.
A great example is paying to build my track record month by month. My results are pretty normal, so financially there isn’t some huge outcome from it right now. I’m literally paying money to build something that might help me access more capital in the future - and I’m speaking in years.
I couldn’t even imagine thinking like that before. Before, everything was about now. Best-case scenario was today, maybe next month, definitely not two years from now.
That changed. And I’m happy it did.
As cliché as it sounds, the more dependent you are on the outcome of your actions, the more stressed you will be. Just do the work. It becomes much easier to continue when you don’t expect every action to immediately give you something back.
I don’t expect much anymore. As depressing as that might sound, it works for me. Maybe it will work for you too.
This year was a huge change for me because I started working as a Business Developer and my schedule changed completely. Before that, I had been trading full-time for around four years combined, and one thing I can tell you is that it’s incredibly hard to stay objective when your only job is trading and you’re dependent on its outcome.
Every losing month matters more because it directly affects your life. Every drawdown feels heavier. You start putting pressure on something that already has enough uncertainty built into it.
Ironically, having less time for trading made trading occupy less space in my head.
I do my preparation, I take the trades I’m supposed to take, I record them, and then I have other things to do. Trading doesn’t have to give me anything today. My track record doesn’t have to suddenly explode. I don’t need one incredible month that proves I’m finally good enough.
I just need to keep building.
And I think this applies to almost everything else I’m doing now. The newsletter doesn’t need to suddenly reach 100,000 readers. My work doesn’t need to turn into some massive opportunity next month. My trading track record doesn’t need to attract capital tomorrow. Even those vegetables I was watering won’t suddenly be ready because I decided I want them now.
You give something the right conditions, take care of it, and wait.
Maybe that’s the part I misunderstood for a long time. I thought patience meant sitting around and hoping something eventually happens. But real patience is actually pretty active. You keep doing the boring things while accepting that you have very little control over when they finally turn into something meaningful.
There probably won’t be a single morning when I wake up and everything is suddenly different.
And I don’t really need that anymore.
If something meaningful happens in two or three years because of what I’m repeatedly doing today, that’s enough for me.
Big things just take time.
Bless you all.
- Luke
P.S - You might have noticed that I changed my nickname to thelukekube, the reason behind it that I do not feel like flow trader anymore. I just want to be myself. Glad you are here and reading about my journey. We are already one year in, let’s see what will be next!
I really like this post. Sometimes especially with trading there is a hustle and grind culture, how we need to be improving every single day. I trade systematically and I hear about alpha decay, macro politics how my infra can break , how props can update rules. But at the end of the day I think the most peace comes from separating outcomes from process. It's my motto now as long as I'm on the right path no matter how slowly I travel I'll still get there