I remember the first time I started trading. I was still in my early 20s then, when I first heard about this great way of making money. It cost me $5,000 to attend a seminar, and it came together with 1 year’s subscription for a scanning tool. And amazingly, do you know how much money I made after that?

You can guess it. I pretty much lost money trading.

After that, I started going around trying to learn as much as I could about trading. Over the course of a few years, I purchased ebooks, attended other thousand dollar courses, read as much as I could about what it takes to be a successful trader. It cost me pretty much more than $20,000 in trading courses alone, not to mention the financial losses from the actual trading.

I pretty much read everything there was available to read about technical indicators, trading software, strategies, markets, Elliott waves, Fibonacci Retracements, Fibonacci Extensions, Pivot Points, Convergence / Divergence style trades, trends, reversals, and whatever other thing you could think of under the sun.

What did I learn from all this?

Trading is a skill. It takes time, patience, and determination to reach your goal. There is a learning curve associated with being a successful trader, pretty much the same as being successful in everything else.

I had to go through the learning curve of mastering my emotions, to understand how to remove greed and fear from my trading as much as possible. To cut through the fluff and get to the substance of successful trading.

I studied trading psychology, which helped me to understand why and how I reacted to certain events and the reasons why I would continue on self-destructive behaviors in the market. I also learnt how to “reprogram” myself to handle the ups and downs that came with trading in the markets.

I reached a point where I completely stopped trading with real money.

I eventually reached a point where I completely stopped trading with real money, and just focused on creating a trading plan and strategy which I could follow. Even then, I struggled to have the discipline to follow a trading plan on paper.

However, the struggle to keep a trading journal helped me to see my blind spots, and helped me to become aware of what I was doing that prevented me from being successful in trading.

Eventually, I started to be able to trade again, without fear, without greed. A strong emphasis on focus and discipline. It took me years to get a handle on myself, and I had to remove myself from my trading buddies to get a sense of myself.

After all, no one I knew really knew what they were doing.

After all, no one I knew really knew what they were doing. They were all just talking as if they were already accomplished traders and making tons of money in the market. The truth was, if they were truly making tons of money, it didn’t help me by getting all envious and emotionally about wanting quick success. And if they weren’t, it also didn’t help me to learn the wrong things from people who just talked trash.

It was only after I got away and really started studying not only the markets, but myself, that I started to find success in trading. Even then, the rare occasions when my closer friends got wind of the latest “sure-win” trading seminar, I still got pulled in by them.

The cycle of progress was two steps forward, one step back.

Today, I’ve got a great handle on my trading emotions because I went through the learning and growing phase. Some of my friends are still groping around in the dark, and none the wiser. One or two have started their own journey of growth, and have become wiser and more patient in their trading.

I guess what I’m sharing is that it takes time, effort, desire and perseverance to become good at anything. It’s tougher in trading because the physical act of trading is so easy. Push a button, click your mouse, and you can open or close a trade.

The tough part isn’t the physical act of trading. It’s the mental game.

The tough part isn’t the physical act of trading. It’s the mental game that goes on inside your head. You’ve got to master yourself, understand yourself, and find out what you really want from your trading.

So if you really still want to master one of the greatest games and businesses in the world, the road is long and narrow. But the light is at the end of the tunnel, and if someone has made it, so can you.