The Real Secret of Trading: Treat the Market as a Video Game, Not a Battlefield
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The Real Secret of Trading: Treat the Market as a Video Game, Not a Battlefield
What truly changed everything for me was not a strategy or an indicator, but a spiritual shift—a fundamental reorientation in my relationship with money.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Justin Werlein
Translated by AididiaoJP, Foresight News
I've been trading for five years. During this time, I’ve made nearly a million dollars and expect to cross that milestone soon. Trading has been one of the most difficult journeys of my life—a journey that taught me deeply about myself, decision-making, my relationship with money, handling pressure, and how to maintain distance from the world.
I’m writing this not to impress anyone, but because I wish someone had told me these things when I first started trading. It might have saved me years of struggle, fewer blown accounts, and countless sleepless nights questioning my self-worth.
After endless pain, I finally began moving toward success—and the method was exactly the opposite of what I once believed I should do. This shift spans multiple dimensions: trading psychology, edge-based strategies, risk management. But honestly, what truly changed everything wasn’t a strategy or indicator, but a fundamental shift in perspective—a mental reorientation, a complete transformation in how I relate to money.
Let me explain.
The Uniqueness of Trading
Trading is one of the most misunderstood professions, mainly because it doesn't fit the conventional definition of "work." People often assume that constant action equals progress. In trading, however, the opposite is true. The less you do, the better your results tend to be.
This single idea alone is enough to mislead most new traders. They treat the market like other endeavors—starting a business, working out, learning a skill—believing that “doing more” leads to success. In other areas, effort is visible: hours invested, repetitions completed, weights lifted. But trading operates under different logic.
The real challenge? Ninety percent of the "work" in trading is sitting and waiting—waiting for high-quality opportunities to clearly emerge, as if the market itself whispers: “Now.” This creates a paradox: instinctively, we believe the more we search, the more we’ll find. But in reality, the more frequently you look, the more likely you are to place yourself in losing situations.
The essence of this game isn’t accumulating trades—it’s deliberately accumulating high-quality setups.
The problem isn’t just overtrading; it’s the mindset that “doing more leads to better outcomes.” I know this well—I used to think that if I just worked harder, studied charts longer, and analyzed more patterns, I could crack the market code. That path simply doesn’t work.
The Market Doesn’t Care How Hard You Try
I often see traders glued to their screens, tirelessly scanning charts, convinced that sheer effort will eventually earn the market’s reward. But the harder you force yourself to trade, the more likely you are to “see” opportunities where none exist. Then come all the classic mistakes: fear of missing out (FOMO), excessive leverage, chasing moves outside your strategy—all stemming from a compulsive need to “do something,” rather than patiently letting the market unfold.
The market doesn’t care about your ambition. It doesn’t reward effort—it rewards correct intent and patience.
You can spend countless hours analyzing, preparing, trying to predict every price fluctuation. But when the critical moment arrives, only one thing matters: whether you’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right mindset. And that cannot be forced. Success in markets cannot be achieved through brute force. What you *can* do is learn to recognize when to act—and even more importantly, when to do nothing.
For me, trading starts becoming spiritual here.
Money is worldly. When you chase it, grab it, try to force it into your hands, it slips away. Like holding water in your palms—the tighter you squeeze, the faster it flows out.
We must understand that to gain true power in life, we need some distance from the material world. If my self-worth hinges entirely on the next profitable trade or tomorrow’s P&L, I’ll remain trapped on the hamster wheel forever. I had to realize: I need to step outside the game, operating from a higher level of awareness.
Viewing Trading Through the Lens of a Game
Becoming a successful trader involves many aspects: psychological strength, having an edge, strict risk management. Yes, you need statistical advantage in the market. But here’s a lesson I learned through painful experience: even with a perfect edge, poor execution by the human operator can destroy everything.
That’s why I believe cultivating the right mindset is the most important thing you can do.
You must treat trading like a video game.
Imagine a child coming home from school to play Call of Duty. He sits outside the screen, controller in hand, free to make decisions. He observes his character’s actions and reacts—but he is separate from it. He is the operator, not the soldier on the battlefield.
Now contrast that with another state: someone who feels like they’re actually on the battlefield. Every bullet feels aimed at them. Each “death” feels like personal annihilation.
Many traders have no separation between themselves and their trades. They become their trading decisions. Every profit or loss becomes part of their identity: winning makes them feel smart, capable, valuable; losing makes them feel stupid, useless, like a failure.
But to succeed in this game—with strategy, edge, and human execution—you must detach yourself from every price movement.
How?
Avoid the Trap of Daily Validation
First, understand that becoming a consistently profitable trader takes time. It won’t happen overnight, not in a week, and for most people, not even in a year.
If you rely on each day or each trade to validate yourself, you’ll stay trapped. You’ll take trades you shouldn’t, enter positions just to “feel productive,” and tie your self-worth tightly to your P&L—this is a dangerous place to be.
Many traders live in “survival mode”: stuck on an endless hamster wheel—good decision, bad decision, good, bad… one step forward, two steps back, repeating endlessly.
How can someone succeed while constantly replaying past mistakes and blown accounts in their mind? Their thoughts are consumed with recovering losses, proving themselves, or seeking validation from the market.
I was deep in that cycle: lying awake at night, mentally replaying every bad trade. Carrying the weight of each failure as if it defined me. Feeling I had to “earn the money back” before I could accept myself again.
That energy—that desperate, clinging, survival-mode energy—poisons everything. When you trade from this state, your decisions become distorted: chasing moves, revenge trading, over-leveraging when you shouldn’t… all errors born from fear, not trust.
The Power of Forgiveness Changes Everything
That’s why forgiveness is essential in trading.
I don’t mean vague, empty “positive vibes.” I mean real forgiveness: forgiving yourself for blown accounts, for foolish mistakes, for moments you knowingly broke your rules.
You must let go—completely.
Every day in the market should begin with a blank slate. A fresh start, unaffected by yesterday’s trades or P&L. If you bring yesterday’s losses into today’s session, you’ve already lost before opening a position. If you carry last month’s blown account into this month’s trading, you’re not really trading—you’re trying to heal wounds. And the market, quite frankly, doesn’t care about your pain.
You must become the observer in trading. Not attached to your decisions, yet able to learn from them. Detached yet present. Focused but not desperate.
Here’s a spiritual principle I took years to grasp: surrender. You must surrender your need to control outcomes, surrender your attachment to money. You must trust that if you keep doing the right things over time, results will come. And you must accept—even embrace—that you don’t know when or how.
It’s hard. Really hard. Especially when bills pile up or you feel the need to prove something. But this is the only way out.
Trading Journal: An Indispensable Tool
This is why keeping a trading journal is so crucial.
It allows you to review later and ask: Why did I make that decision? What did I see? What was I thinking? How did the market respond to my assumptions?
A journal creates distance. It lets you step outside the game, reviewing like a coach studying game footage. You’re no longer the soldier on the front line—you’re the player holding the controller. You can see your decisions for what they are: moves in the game, not extensions of your identity.
A journal also helps uncover behavioral patterns—not chart patterns, but *your* patterns: maybe you overtrade on Mondays, revenge-trade after losses, or increase size before blowing up. You can’t change what you can’t see, and a journal helps you see.
Scarcity vs. Abundance: Two Opposing Mindsets
This brings me to a concept that fundamentally transformed my trading: understanding the vast difference between operating from scarcity versus abundance.
- Scarcity mindset: “I must win this trade. I need to make money today. I have to prove I’m not a failure.”
- Abundance mindset: “The market will always be there. Opportunities will come. My job is to wait for the right one.”
When you operate from scarcity, you’re in a low-frequency, tense state—desperate, grasping. And the market—the mirror of collective human behavior—responds accordingly. You make poor decisions and attract poor outcomes.
When you operate from abundance, you’re trusting, relaxed, patient. You understand that money flows toward clarity and discipline, not desperation and chaos.
You must align your intention with the market’s rhythm. I cannot impose my will on the market. I must first respond to what the market offers. This isn’t weakness—it’s wisdom. The market is bigger than me, bigger than all of us. My task isn’t to conquer it, but to dance with it.
What Are You Really Chasing?
Think back to your trading mistakes. What were you really pursuing? A setup that fits your framework—or just the “feeling of making money”?
Here’s the core issue: too many traders enter the market subconsciously chasing “money,” when their real goal should be “building good trading habits.” Focus on the habits, and the money will follow.
An even deeper question: What does money represent to you?
To some, it means security; to others, status, freedom, or proof that they’re not a failure. Whatever it represents, that’s what you’re truly chasing in your trades. And if that pursuit is tied to your self-worth, your decisions will inevitably reflect insecurity.
I had to do deep work on my relationship with money. I had to realize money itself is neutral—it has no moral value. It’s pure energy. It flows toward places that welcome it, and flees from those who chase it. I had to learn that my personal worth has nothing to do with my account balance. I had to separate “who I am” from “what I own.”
Once I did that, trading became much easier. Because I was no longer trading to “feel good about myself.” I traded because I had a proven edge and was executing it with discipline.
The Key Shift: From Results to Process
You must shift your focus from short-term profit to long-term habit-building. The wealth generated by solid habits will far exceed anything you could force through short-term trading.
The key insight: trading success isn’t about how much money you make today, but about your long-term consistency in following your strategy. Most traders fall into the trap of tying satisfaction to financial outcomes. But in this game, money is a byproduct. You can get lucky and make money randomly. If your sense of fulfillment depends on such random results, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Real trading success comes from finding satisfaction in the process itself—in discipline, patience, and the ability to sit calmly amid market chaos, waiting for the right moment.
The fewer trades you take, the more purposeful each one becomes. As you reduce trading frequency, you’ll realize: your goal isn’t constant interaction with the market, but maintaining enough patience and clarity to recognize and act when a genuine opportunity arises.
Patience Is Not Passivity
Impatience is the fatal flaw of most traders. That urge to act—just to feel busy—erodes capital, both financially and mentally.
Patience in trading isn’t passive waiting. It’s the active choice to do nothing when no action is needed. It’s recognizing when emotions try to take over, when inner voices push you to act impulsively—and pausing to ask: Does this decision align with my edge?
When you free yourself from the need to “be doing something,” you gain a new kind of power. You stop convincing yourself to take mediocre trades. Instead, you wait for the market to deliver a setup that perfectly matches your strategy—one that fills you with confidence, almost shouting at you to act.
These are the trades that lead to long-term success.
The Final Truth
Ultimately, it all comes down to this: Stop trading to make money. Start trading to build good habits. Stop chasing. Start arriving. Shift your focus from outcome to process.
Each time you sit down to trade, remind yourself of the long-term vision: You’re not here to make a quick buck today. You’re building a system that will support you for years, even decades.
Less is more. Fewer trades, higher quality. Fewer decisions, clearer thinking.
The market will always be there—but if you keep chasing non-existent opportunities, your capital won’t last. Train yourself to value discipline over dollars. Success isn’t about being in the market all the time, but about being in the right trade at the most important moment.
Your best trading often happens when you feel you’re putting in the least “effort.”
Forgive your past mistakes. Begin each day anew. Be the player holding the controller, not the soldier on the battlefield. Align your will with the market’s rhythm. Heal your relationship with money. Understand: you are not your P&L.
And remember: you cannot force the market to give you what you want. You can only respond to what it offers. Surrender the outcome. Trust the process. Let it flow.
This is the game of trading. These are the lessons I learned over five years and countless struggles.
Now, it’s your turn to learn—hopefully, faster than I did.
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@JustinWerlein
