The Obstacle Is The Way
"While it's true that someone can impede our actions, they can't impede our intentions and our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its action into a means of achieving it. That which is an impediment to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
An interesting meditation today and the co-author of these Daily Stoic notes, Ryan Holiday actually wrote a book titled "The Obstacle Is The Way"; The timeless art of turning trials into triumph
We can also turn obstacles when we are trading into positives. A trade is starting to go against us, so we cut our loss at our pre-agreed exit point, to avoid an unmanaged loss that can put a huge dent in our trading bank. When we can confidently manage to do this, on every occasion that a trade is going against us, we have turned that potential negative obstacle, into a managed positive trade and the many profitable trades will outweigh these occasional losses, as long as we control them as intended.
So what if a losing trade goes wrong and we lose more than our agreed cut off point? We can use this obstacle as a catalyst to learn from and remind ourselves that we must stick to the plan and cut a potential losing trade swiftly and without hesitation, when it happens again; because it will happen again, as it's all part of our trading journey. We won't have every trade going our way and that is a fact. But as long as we manage those trades that are going against us early enough, we ensure that our bank is intact and we stay in the game, ready to fight the next battle!
So by cutting potential losing trades as per our plan, we are turning trials into triumph and therefore securing long term profitability on our trading journey.