Becky’s Setback & How She’s Overcoming It
Between all the different seasons, there are always highs and lows. As we're coming out of summer now, this episode will highlight Becky’s journey and what she’s growing through currently. Here at Market Mamas, we are constantly striving to be open and authentic with our experiences and any tips we are gaining along the way. For the full conversation, you will want to watch the episode to really get a feel for this important topic of overcoming challenging setbacks as a trader.
This summer has been particularly trying for Becky for a few kind of extra reasons. So, we've talked some in previous episodes about her acute back re-injury that happened at the end of June of this summer. Becky trades the market every day, but she is also a nurse and so she hasn’t been able to work at the hospital where she works part-time at since this injury happened. So that's been different in terms of her weekly schedule, her body and her physical capabilities, but then, everything crosses over to everything else with life, right? With trading, this summer Becky did try to put trading into a box per say and aimed to still mostly continue in that role while working through recovering her disc herniation. She was hoping that she could hold steady with her trading and not have her injury and pain impact or influence when she was in her office at her charts. Essentially, Becky wanted her work as a trader that she conduct at her home anyways to remain as unaffected as possible, as it’s not like it requires physical effort, such as lifting. But that's not really the situation or a realistic probable outcome. We have learned through time the consistent traders really have to change and upgrade their identities. You have to become a consistent day trader and everything truly crosses over into every other part of one’s life.
It’s similar to discipline discussions. If you are disciplined in one area of your life, you'll often be disciplined in multiple areas. But if you struggle with making disciplined decisions in some areas and you just do whatever the heck you want, but over here, you want to be disciplined consistently - how that doesn't really work. And so for Becky this summer, to think that her physical situation could stay contained and only impact her body health, and when she wanted to do the other things and her brain was sharp, that it would be fine. Well, that wasn't actually the case.
“I did my best every day to bury the anger and frustration I was feeling deeply regarding having my momentum swept out from under me when I least expected or wanted it.”
~ Becky Gaskell, summer 2024
The essence of why Becky wanted to talk about this period for her is because for Becky, this reinjury was a catalyst for some impact and shifting in her life. But for someone else, it could be something else. It could be a divorce, a car accident, something going on with a loved one that is significant and impactful to the entire household. There's so many different major life events that can happen that could potentially seriously derail a career of any sort for a period of time. And trading being the example for Becky’s professional life, she just had to muddle her way through and figure out how to best navigate that. With nursing, she physically cannot lift right now, so it is black and white - she is on a leave of absence, end of discussion. But as a retail day trader, there’s this huge gray area that is totally manipulatable and up to each trader regarding when they are capable of executing to par.
In this season, Becky felt like she needed to give credit where it's due with this because it's been the work that she has done over the last three years that has gotten her through this summer. Last year was when she first discovered Dr. Joe Dispenza from Jermaine's recommendation, he was hugely impactful for her. Becky really dug into that book and did a lot of the work it asks of the readers. We did a must read recommendation episode on that actually and it's a really good episode. You guys should check it out if you haven't. (https://youtu.be/GY7ssmkwtFA?si=ht26KfMq6IRjt7vQ) One thing that Dispenza says all the time is “if you want a new outcome, you have to break the habit of being yourself and reinvent a new self.” Becky did a tremendous amount of work last year on that. She feels like that really improved her trading and her life in general. Becky started to really pivot as a human into someone who takes more accountability for her day to day outcomes, who owns things more openly and wholly, and who is living less in the past, but more so just trying to show up each day and be who she wants to be to create the future that she wants. And so Becky feels like she now has this huge body of work that she has done leading up to this summer that is still very present in who she currently is.
Leaning back into that growth this summer has been really beneficial because of all of the work that she did previously. Work like that impacts our current moment, because it changes who we are. With that work, you can actually slowly and insidiously turn into someone different. There's really no place in time that Becky thinks that she could pinpoint that change, but recognizing as she’s coming out of the season of July and growing through it, she has been able to lean into a lot of those changes that she made to who she was and how she approached life and owns her outcomes. That helped Becky substantially through this now because in hindsight, July was a bloody month for her and not necessarily in terms of medical. But there were many days where she wanted her injury to live in its box and she wanted to still be a productive podcaster and a productive trader and have her trading journey not really impacted because she was still pretty mentally sharp.
In reality, Becky was not ready to trade however badly she wanted to be. And, truth bomb here, so she would lie to herself and her people - Becky would repeatedly tell everyone that she’s fine. She would manipulate her body scan to say that she was good enough in those situations. However, good enough is not actually the same as good. Becky did her best every day to bury the anger and frustration she was feeling deeply regarding having her momentum swept out from under her when she least expected or wanted it. She suffered losing accounts, forward momentum, and a setback in time horizon goals… Thank goodness her system is set up in a way that her family and finances were always safe with using funded accounts. But she still paid too much in fees and it caused some trauma, trading trauma during a period where she didn't need to have it.
In hindsight, the biggest lesson for her would be to recognize and respect her whole body system more seriously. If something is going on in an interpersonal relationship or physically, or with someone who's close to you, and it's impacting your clarity of thought and internal peace on a daily basis, then this is critical to factor in… Trading or any really challenging pursuit that you're doing, the timeline can change and that needs to be okay. You can take a period where you do less of what you love when circumstances warrant that. Becky loves trading or she wouldn't be here and wouldn't have suffered through all the things that she has to get to this point as a trader. Looking back, Becky feels like she learned an incredible amount about respecting her personal conditions and giving that more credence in terms of especially risk management in those moments. Because sure, she could still trade if she felt pretty good, but she could have been way better at being cognizant that she needed to be very careful.
The main point with the Dr. Joe Dispenza work is that when you make those changes, it changes your core and then that's what holds strong and gets you through the more challenging seasons. Now that Becky is past the worst period of her back injury and she’s progressing, it's good to remember all the ways that she has shown up for herself through it and that her self -worth is not tied to any one outcome in her life, such as a daily trading P/L. Whether you were injured, whether your trading sucks for a period for whatever reason, it doesn't mean that you're still not an amazing human. This is the season that Becky had and she doesn’t love her trading journal for July. But it is what it is.
We all should kind of try to love ourselves more through periods when one part of ourselves is not at its ideal and just respect the fact that no one can be on point always. That's sort of the human condition that we're all part of. That will make you stronger if you can just accept it and realize that it doesn't need to change your identity that you are currently improving and growing into. We can still respect how limitless our possibilities are and all the directions that we're going to go when we just keep growing. Just because something was mellowed out for a minute doesn't mean that it's not going to flip back into the positive momentum energy again very soon.
Becoming a consistently profitable trader is a long journey - a marathon and not a sprint, right? It really is beautiful that there is such variability from trader to trader as well! It's okay if what you do doesn't look exactly like anybody else, as long as you're sure that you're behaving true to who you are and being responsible for how you intend to operate your business and treating your trading as a business. Respecting our rules and our parameters that we have in place to function optimally in that situation is critical. And no two trading businesses have to be the same, but you do have to respect yourself and your system enough to dial in your process and own it and pivot and adjust over time so that you're always acutely aware of what you're doing and why. Becky is growing through that as well with this summer upheaval and who knows, it might turn out to be a very important season for her in the long run.
If any of you have similarly had a setback of any kind in your life and thereby trading career as Becky did this summer - let’s just breathe. We really believe that one can work their ass off for months and years in one direction, such as becoming a consistently profitable day trader, and not feel like you’re getting anywhere. And then one day you look up and you are so very far improved from your early months that it can shock you. With that belief, we try our best to breathe through our challenging seasons, trust our efforts, and let the results come when we are truly, wholly ready for them.
We want to take this moment to just say that whatever you're going through, however hard it gets, however dark it gets, just because you're having a season that's more challenging, we have been there too! Becky is getting through it by just loving herself and appreciating the things that she was doing well enough. And as she came out of it and gained more awareness, she just continued to do the work that she fundamentally had built, because those fundamentals never leave. Even if you're having a dark period, those will hold you down. The work that you have done last year, two years ago, that's still there. The fact that you're even watching our show/ reading this blog means that you care a lot about your trading and your journey.
Thank you to everyone who is subscribing to our podcast, reading our blogs, and providing us feedback! We are here to talk openly about everything that may help us all level up within our lives, be it day trading or otherwise. We wish you all the very best for your lives!