Why are you in such a hurry?

Compound effect of being stressed all the time.

Recently, I caught myself doing something that I have been doing for years without even realizing it.

I was sitting at home and doing all the things I usually do during the day and for some reason I felt stressed. Nothing bad had happened. Nobody was dying. There was no emergency. There wasn’t even a deadline I absolutely had to meet. Yet somehow I felt like I was running late.

Late for what exactly, I don’t know.

The funny thing is that when I looked back at my life, I realized this feeling has been with me for years. When I started trading, I was in a hurry to make money trading. When I made money, I was in a hurry to get funded with bigger account. When I got a bigger account, I was in a hurry to make even more money. Then I wanted more freedom. Then more followers. Then a bigger business.

Every goal I reached simply created another goal.

I think a lot of traders understand this feeling because trading attracts ambitious people. Most people reading this are not sitting around waiting for life to happen. They are trying to improve themselves, build something, create freedom for themselves and their families, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem starts when your entire life becomes a race toward some future version of yourself that doesn’t even exist yet.

I spent years believing that once I reached a certain point, things would finally calm down. I thought that once I became profitable, I would stop worrying. Then I thought that once I had enough money, I would stop stressing.

What I discovered instead is that the human brain is incredibly good at moving the goalposts.

The things that once felt impossible eventually become normal. The things you prayed for become things you barely think about. The dreams become expectations, and then the expectations become pressure.

A few years ago, being able to trade for a living sounded ridiculous to me. The idea that I could wake up wherever I wanted, open a laptop and make money from the markets felt almost unrealistic. Then I spent months traveling around Southeast Asia and living exactly that reality. The funny thing is that while I was there, I was already thinking about the next thing. I was already worrying about growth, performance, future plans and everything else that was supposedly waiting for me.

I had what I wanted, but my mind was somewhere else.

I think social media makes this even worse. No matter what you achieve, there is always someone making more money than you. Someone with a bigger business. Someone younger. Someone with a nicer lifestyle. Someone posting screenshots that make it look like they have life completely figured out.

You can be having a genuinely good day, open your phone for five minutes, and suddenly feel behind in life despite the fact that nothing actually changed.

What interests me the most is how this compounds over time.

People talk about compound interest all the time, but stress compounds too.

One stressful day is not a problem. One stressful week is not a problem either. But spending years in a state where you constantly feel like you should be somewhere else, earning more, doing more, achieving more and becoming more starts to leave a mark on you. It slowly becomes your default state.

You stop enjoying where you are because your attention is always focused on where you think you should be.

You stop appreciating progress because all you can see is the distance that remains.

You stop feeling grateful for what you have because you are obsessed with what you don’t have.

And eventually you wake up one day realizing that you have spent years chasing freedom while feeling mentally imprisoned by your own expectations.

Ironically, trading taught me the opposite lesson.

Some of the best trades I have ever taken happened because I waited. They happened because I sat there, did nothing and allowed the opportunity to come to me.

Yet for some reason I have often approached life differently than I approach trading.

I have rushed things.

I have worried about things that were years away.

I have felt pressure that existed only inside my own head.

I have acted as if life was some kind of race where everybody starts at the same line and the winner is the person who accumulates the most achievements before the finish.

The older I get, the less I believe that.

I still have goals. I still want to build things. I still want to improve and I absolutely don’t think ambition is the enemy.

I just don’t want to spend the next ten years of my life constantly waiting for my life to begin.

Because if there is one thing I have learned over the last few years, it is that the future arrives much faster than you think. One day you are dreaming about becoming a trader. The next day you realize you have been doing it for almost six years. One day you are telling yourself that you’ll be happy when you finally reach a certain goal. The next day you realize you reached it a long time ago and immediately replaced it with another one.

Maybe the answer is not to stop chasing meaningful goals.

Maybe the answer is simply to stop treating every season of life as a waiting room for the next one.

So if you’ve been feeling stressed recently, ask yourself a simple question.

Why are you in such a hurry?

The future will arrive whether you worry about it or not.

Bless you all.

- Luke