The true secret of trading: treat the market as a video game, not a battlefield

Written by: Justin Werlein

Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

I have been involved in trading for five years. During this time, I have earned nearly one million dollars and look forward to crossing this milestone soon. Trading is one of the most challenging journeys of my life so far; it has taught me so much—about myself, about decision-making, about my relationship with money, about handling pressure, and about maintaining distance from the world.

I write this not to impress anyone. But because I genuinely wish someone had told me these things when I first started trading. Maybe it could have saved me years of suffering, prevented a few account blowups, and spared me sleepless nights filled with self-doubt.

After experiencing countless pains, I finally began to find success—and the method, surprisingly, was the opposite of what I once believed I should do. It involves multiple layers: trading psychology, advantageous strategies, risk management. But honestly, what truly changed everything for me was not a specific strategy or indicator, but a fundamental shift in perspective. A mental turning point, a reshaping of my relationship with money.

Let me explain in detail.

The Uniqueness of Trading

Trading is one of the most misunderstood professions, mainly because it doesn’t conform to the conventional definition of “work.” People often mistakenly think that continuous action equals progress. But in trading, the opposite is true. The less you do, the better your results tend to be.

This single concept is enough to cause most novice traders to lose their way. They treat the market as they would other pursuits: starting a business, working out, or learning a skill—always thinking “more doing” equals success. In other fields, effort is visible: time invested, repetitions, weights lifted. But trading doesn’t follow this logic.

The real challenge is: 90% of the “work” in trading is sitting and waiting. Waiting for high-quality trading opportunities to clearly emerge, as if the market is saying to you: “It’s now.” This creates a paradox: our instinct is that the more we look, the more we find. But in reality, the more frequently you search, the more likely you are to set yourself up for failure.

The essence of this industry isn’t about accumulating trades, but purposefully gathering high-quality opportunities.

The problem isn’t just “overtrading,” but the mindset that “more action leads to better results.” I’ve been there myself. I used to think that working harder, studying charts longer, researching more patterns would unlock the market’s secrets. But that path is fundamentally flawed.

Markets Don’t Care About Your Effort

I often see traders glued to their screens, tirelessly scanning charts, convinced that as long as they hustle enough, the market will reward them. But the harder you force yourself to trade, the more likely you are to “see” opportunities where none exist. Consequently, typical mistakes follow: FOMO (fear of missing out), over-leverage, chasing markets that don’t fit your strategy… All driven by an impulse to “do something,” rather than patiently waiting for the market to unfold naturally.

Markets don’t care about your ambitions. They don’t reward hard work; they reward correct intent and patience.

You can spend countless hours analyzing, preparing, trying to predict every fluctuation. But when the critical moment arrives, what matters most is: Are you in the right place at the right time with the right mindset? And that can’t be forced. You can’t brute-force success in markets. All you can do is learn to recognize when to act—and more importantly, when to do nothing.

For me, that’s where trading begins—adding a deeper spiritual meaning.

Money is worldly. When you chase it, grab it, or try to force it to come to you, it slips away. Like holding water in your hands—squeeze tighter, and it flows faster.

We must understand that to gain true power in life, we need to maintain a certain distance from worldly pursuits. If my self-worth is entirely tied to the next profitable trade or the next profitable day, I will be forever trapped in a hamster wheel. I must first realize: I need to step outside the game, operate from a higher consciousness.

Viewing Trading Through a Gaming Perspective

Becoming a successful trader involves multiple aspects: psychological resilience, having advantageous strategies, and strict risk management. You do need to have a statistical edge in the market. But this is a lesson I learned at great pain: even with a perfect strategy advantage, the trader— the person executing—can ruin everything through poor execution.

Therefore, I believe cultivating the right trading perspective 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, holding a controller, free to make decisions. He observes the actions of the characters on screen and reacts, but he is separate from the characters—he is the operator, not the soldier charging into battle.

Contrast that with another state: a person who feels they are truly on the battlefield. Every bullet seems to come at them, every “death” feels like the end of their world.

Many traders have no boundary between themselves and their trading. They are their own decision-makers. Every profit or loss becomes part of their identity: profit makes them feel smart, capable, valuable; losses make them feel stupid, useless, a failure.

But to succeed in this game through strategic advantage and human operation, you must detach yourself from each rise and fall.

How to do that?

Beware the Trap of “Daily Validation”

First, you must understand that becoming a consistently profitable trader is a process. It’s not something you achieve overnight, in a week, or even in a year for most people.

If you rely on each day or each trade to validate yourself, you will be forever stuck. You’ll make trades you shouldn’t, force entries because you “need to feel like you did something,” and tie your self-worth tightly to your P&L—this is a very dangerous place.

Many traders are stuck in “survival mode”: feeling like they’re on an endless hamster wheel, making a good decision, then a bad one, then good, then bad… going backward and forward in a cycle.

When someone’s mind keeps replaying past mistakes and blowups, how can they succeed? Their mind is only focused on recovering losses, proving themselves, or seeking market approval.

I’ve been there myself: lying awake at night, replaying every bad trade, burdened by each failure as if it defines me. Feeling I must “make the money back” to regain self-acceptance.

That energy—the despair, the clutching, the survival mode—poisons everything. When you trade with that state, your decisions become distorted: chasing moves, revenge trading, overleveraging when you shouldn’t… All errors stem from operating out of fear, not trust.

The Power of Forgiveness, and How It Changes Everything

That’s why “forgiveness” is crucial in trading.

I don’t mean the abstract, hollow “feel good” kind. I mean real forgiveness: forgiving yourself for blowing up your account, forgiving yourself for stupid mistakes, forgiving yourself for knowingly breaking your rules.

You must let go of all that—completely.

Every day entering the market should be like a blank sheet. A brand new day, unaffected by yesterday’s trades or P&L. If you carry yesterday’s losses into today’s trading, you’ve already lost before you start. If you carry the shadow of last month’s blowup into this month’s trading, you’re not really trading—you’re trying to heal—and the market doesn’t care about your wounds.

You must be an observer in your trading. Not attached to your decisions, but able to learn from them. Stay detached yet present; stay focused but not despairing.

Here’s a principle I took years to understand: surrender. You must surrender to the desire for control over outcomes, surrender to attachment to money. You must believe that if you do the right things consistently over the long term, the results will come. And you must be able to accept calmly that you don’t know when or how they will arrive.

This is very difficult, especially when facing bills or wanting to prove something. But it’s the only way out.

Trading Journal: An Indispensable Tool

That’s why keeping a trading journal is so important.

It allows you to review afterward and ask yourself: Why did I make that decision? What did I see at the time? What was I thinking? How did the market respond to my ideas?

Writing a journal helps create distance. It allows you to step back from the game, review like a coach watching game tape. You’re no longer a soldier on the battlefield but a player holding the controller. You can see the essence of your decisions—just one move in the game, not an extension of your identity.

A journal also helps you discover your behavioral patterns. Not chart patterns, but your own habits: maybe you overtrade every Monday, or revenge trade after losses, or can’t resist adding to a position before a blowup… You can’t change what you don’t see, but a journal reveals it.

Scarcity vs. Abundance Mindset: Two Completely Different Attitudes

This led me to a fundamental insight that transformed my trading: understanding the vast difference between operating from a “scarcity” versus an “abundance” mindset.

Scarcity says: I must win this trade. I need to make money today. I must prove I’m not a failure.

Abundance says: The market is always there. Opportunities will come. My job is to wait for the right one.

When operating from scarcity, you’re in a low-frequency, tense state. Desperate, grasping. The market—reflecting collective human behavior—responds accordingly. You make poor decisions, attracting poor results.

From abundance, you operate with trust, relaxation, and patience. You understand that money flows toward clarity and discipline, not despair and chaos.

You must align your will with the market’s will. You can’t impose your ideas on the market. You must first respond to the signals it gives. That’s not weakness; that’s wisdom. The market is bigger than you, bigger than all of us. Your task isn’t to conquer it but to dance with it.

What Are You Truly Pursuing?

When you look back at your mistakes in trading, what are you really chasing? An opportunity that fits your clear framework, or just the “feeling of making money”?

This is the core question: too many traders enter the market with the subconscious goal of “making money,” but the real goal should be “building good trading habits.” Focus on habits, and money will follow naturally.

Another deeper question: what does money truly represent to you?

For some, money means security; for others, it signifies status, freedom, or proof that they are not failures. Whatever it represents, that’s what you’re really pursuing in trading. If that pursuit is tightly bound to your self-worth, your decisions will inevitably reflect that insecurity.

I’ve had to do a lot of work on my relationship with money. I must understand that money itself is neither good nor evil; it’s neutral, a form of energy. It flows to where it’s welcomed, and flees from where it’s chased. I need to learn that my personal value has nothing to do with my account balance. I must separate “who I am” from “what I have.”

When I achieve that, trading becomes much easier. Because I no longer trade to “feel good.” I trade because I have a verified strategic advantage and I execute it strictly.

The Key Shift: From Results to Process

You must shift your focus from “making money in the short term” to “cultivating rock-solid habits” over the long term. The wealth these habits generate will far surpass what you can force from the market in the short run.

The key is understanding: trading success isn’t about how much you make today, but about your discipline in executing your strategy over time. Most traders fall into the trap of tying satisfaction to monetary results. But in this game, money is just a byproduct. You might get lucky and make money by chance. If your satisfaction depends on these chance outcomes, you’re paving the way for failure.

True trading success comes from deriving satisfaction from the process itself— from discipline, patience, and the ability to sit still and wait for the right moment amid market chaos.

The fewer trades you take, the more purposeful each one becomes. As you reduce your trading frequency, you’ll gradually realize: your goal isn’t to interact with the market constantly, but to maintain enough patience and clarity to recognize and act on real opportunities.

Patience Is Not Passivity

Lack of patience is the fatal flaw of most traders. The impulse to act when there’s nothing to do, to force trades when the market isn’t offering opportunities, erodes your capital—financially and mentally.

Patience in trading isn’t about passively watching the market. It’s about actively choosing not to act when there’s no reason to. It’s about noticing when your emotions try to take over, when your mind’s voice urges impulsive decisions, and stopping to analyze: does this decision align with my strategic advantage?

When you free yourself from the need to constantly act, you gain a different kind of strength. You no longer try to convince yourself to accept mediocre trades. Instead, you wait for the market to present a trade that fits your strategy perfectly, one that makes you confident and feels like it’s calling out to you.

It’s these trades that will lead to long-term success.

The Ultimate Truth

Ultimately, it all boils down to: stop trading for money, start trading to develop good habits. Stop chasing frantically, and start arriving calmly. Shift your focus from the outcome to the process itself.

Every time you sit down to trade, remind yourself of that long-term vision: you’re not here to make a quick buck today. You’re here to build a trading system that can support you for years or even decades.

Less is more. The fewer trades, the higher the quality. Fewer decisions, clearer thinking.

The market is always there, but if you keep chasing nonexistent opportunities, your capital won’t stay with you forever. Train yourself to value discipline over dollars. Success isn’t about being constantly in the market; it’s about being in the right trades at the right moments.

When you feel you’re exerting the least “effort,” that’s often when you’re trading most successfully.

Forgive your past mistakes. Start each day anew. Be the player holding the controller, not the soldier on the battlefield. Synchronize your will with the market’s rhythm. Manage your relationship with money. Understand that you are not your P&L.

And remember: you can’t force the market to give you what you want. You can only respond to the opportunities it offers. Surrender to the outcome, trust the process, and let it flow naturally.

This is the game of trading. This is the insight I’ve gained after five years and countless pains.

Now, it’s your turn to learn—and I hope you learn faster than I did.