What Trading Taught Me About Surrender, Spirituality and Reality

Have you ever tried to achieve something hard only to find your own past and conditioning getting in the way? Did you resort to begging and pleading, or did you find another way? This is what I learned about submission and the illusion of control:

I was 28, trading in the bank in 2011. I bet that Greece and other South European governments would default. The consensus was that it would never happen. I was convinced it would. Despite the incredulity that surrounded me and tricky market whiplashes, I stuck with it. Greece defaulted. The crowd was wrong. I had my big win. I felt invincible. Like I could fly close to the sun and my wings wouldn't melt.

Eventually the bank became too constraining for someone who “knows it all” and I went out trading on my own. People often ask me how I do it - No colleagues, no boss, no institutional backing, or salary.

The truth is that after about 3 years of messing about, I came face to face with the depths of my stubbornness, insincerity, overconfidence, and unseriousness to such a degree that I had a serious conversation with “the Force”. It went something like this:

Me: This is freaking hard, I keep making money and giving it back and some, on a repeating loop.

The Force: No one cares. What do you really want? What are you chasing?

Me: I want to make high returns on my capital every year. If someone gives me capital on my terms – fine, but I don’t want to go and beg for it.

The Force: How do I know if you are serious? How bad do you want it?

Me: I am going to persevere without having a Plan B no matter what you throw at me!

The resolve was this:

No matter what happens, I will keep going. If I blow it, I blow it. If I have to be content with a meagre monthly income for the rest of my life, so be it. Ex-colleagues or whoever might think I am a loser, to hell with my image as well.

Easier life, easier jobs: there are plenty of those. They don’t interest me because I am not interested in being a quitter just because this is hard. I resolved not to quit until I master consistently high performance.

It would disappoint me if I started entertaining Plan B’s out of a position of weakness. If I ever do something else, it will be out of a position of strength. It would suck to depend on others to ‘pay’ me + I hate marketing myself. The level of freedom I felt is unparalleled despite the difficulties, hence I persevered.

The Force submitted when the seriousness of resolve hit this fever pitch (as seen in hindsight).

Turns out I have learned more about trading and managing risk at home than I did in the bank: at home the stakes are more significant. When stakes are high you can’t settle in an intellectual cesspool of nice theories for long - you have to get to the point of what works in practice for you.

Over time the mistakes reduced, the activity became less forced, I enjoyed good years and the freedom to do what I want from a position of strength. Much more interesting are the parallels with real life outside of trading I picked up on the way.

The ability to fully submit to the will of something bigger than you, something that you can’t control, is a process. It is easier said than done, but it is the only way if one wants to get somewhere real. 

In trading, that something is the market as the culmination of millions of participants and factors. 

In life in general it is Reality. In Taoism, it’s called the Tao – the enigmatic process that drives everything. In certain science circles it would be known as a morphic self-organizing field with the organizing activity being probabilistic. A summary of my understanding of “it” is outlined in the 6 points in this article I wrote. Here, I will be calling it The Force.

“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” - Obi Wan Kenobi. Star Wars.

The moment you start pushing your excess desires upon The Force through clinging, demanding, hoping, fearing… the moment you think you are a bit smart or indulge in some overconfidence, you will be smacked down. If you indulge in feeling sorry for yourself or despair or overthinking - it will cost you as well.

My experience has led me to become keen on going with the flow of The Force as opposed to against it at multiple levels in life outside of markets.

What I have learned:

The optimal way to be, is to start loving what IS without hoping or attaching to the outcome.

Before you can LOVE what IS unconditionally, you need to be able to SEE what IS, without tainting reality with what you wish it to be.

To SEE what IS, you need to WANT TO SEE true reality badly, meaning UNDERSTANDING the superiority of what really IS to anything else.

That last one is the tricky part for most as people think they are “smart”, they think that they know and control more than they do in reality. 

To logically understand the superiority of what IS beyond mere theoretical buy-in, you end up digging in things like the nature of reality and consciousness, complexity science, non- linear dynamics, and ancient wisdom. Then you put the pieces together from different disciplines and realize and FEEL how little you actually know and control. You can have fights with reality in your head as much as you want, but it’s pointless unless you can actually go and do something about it. Basically, the quicker you can let go of your anger / disappointment / resentment/ fear the quicker you are realigned with the flow. 

When the Illusion of Control is fully dropped (this takes some time) and the submission to the Force is complete, only then are you given access to “Jedi powers” – the things that make high level performance effortless, the state of flow and “being in the zone” which is often mentioned by top performing athletes.

If there is need for comfort, fear or greed or your actions are not aligned with your core values - it transmutes into excess energy. The result being that the thing that you chase eludes you. Excess force, according to laws of physics, creates counterforce, which has a limiting effect by default.  One doesn’t have to believe in things like a unifying energy field to be able to observe this effect in own life: 

When you are staring at the phone too eager for someone to call - they will never call. 

When your child hears desperation and excess emotion in your voice when you try too hard to make him do something… he shuts down or rebels more. 

When a girl is naturally easy going and not too eager – the man chases her, when she is overly clingy… you know what happens. 

“The Force” hands out Jedi Powers in small batches based on the level of your sincerity, self-honesty, and ability to debunk your own beliefs. Progress is always possible , but only for those who value it more than their convictions.

Over time, as this process unfolds and all your beliefs become ‘loosely held’, you realize you can actually be engaged in a co-creative partnership with The Force that drives reality. Then, a whole new level of fun begins…

I am inspired to unpack this subject on a practical level in parenting and life in general through creative writing and other means. Perhaps it will make the ride into increased complexity a bit more comfortable for some.

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