Your Process Is the Shortcut
Don’t go the long way
“Like hell I’m going to do that.
I’m going to do this the fast way.
I don’t need that. I’m definitely going to be able to trade without all that journaling and spreadsheets and reviewing.
This guy is making millions.
I don’t need to backtest or collect all my own data.
I’ve learned his system. I’m a smart guy.
It makes total logical sense when and where you have to trade from to make that work.
Yeah, I’ll just go live.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what people think is a shortcut when they’re new to trading.
It’s exactly what I did.
You’re confident.
The teacher was good. The system was clear.
So you take a couple of trades. You’re sensible. You don’t risk too much. 0.5% per trade.
You do your analysis. You mark up some charts.
Okay, cool. I’ll do this when price reaches here. Something slightly different happens. You roll with it.
And you see the pattern you’ve been learning. Boom!
Hey, it’s a winner!!
You think, “fuck me, it works!”
But here’s what’s happening under the surface:
Your brain is craving validation. It’s linking “winning” with “understanding.”
The dopamine hit confirms your belief that this is easy, that you’ve cracked it.
What you don’t realise yet is that your brain is attaching identity to outcome.
Each trade becomes a mini performance review on who you are as a trader — or even as a person.
But, you remain sensible. Don’t up your risk per trade. You watch some more.
Your pattern appears again.
Yeah! Another winner!
You feel clever. Capable.
It’s working.
And that’s the most dangerous place a new trader can be — because now you believe success comes from knowledge, not experience.
What’s really happening:
You’re building confidence on fragile foundations.
You’ve never faced uncertainty long enough to know how it feels when the pattern doesn’t play out.
You haven’t built the emotional muscle memory that separates knowing from executing.
Then it happens-
You get hit.
The same setup fails.
You stare at the screen.
You second-guess your rules.
You move your stop.
You take another trade to “get it back.”
You add a new rule, remove another one.
And without knowing it, you’ve drifted from thinly veiled process to chaos.
Now you’re in the real test - the one every trader eventually meets.
You don’t need more strategy.
You need proof that you can stay still when every cell in your body wants to move.
That’s where most new traders blow up - not because they don’t understand the market (but often this too early on), but because they don’t understand themselves.
The Psychology Underneath It Looks Like This:
The brain can’t stand uncertainty, so it seeks control.
Losses feel like threats, so the ego scrambles to protect identity.
The trader confuses movement with progress.
Emotion overrides logic, and the negative loop repeats.
The shortcut was never a shortcut. It was just a faster way to reach frustration.
Now let’s look at the seasoned trader:
He’s calm - not because he doesn’t care, but because he’s been through this already.
He’s lived through drawdown, felt the sting of following rules that didn’t pay off - and learned that discipline works on delay.
He journals.
He tracks everything — not for perfection, but for proof.
He does a mark up every night, and an SR (advanced self review) every weekend.
And he stacks proof. And more data.
Because proof is what gives him peace.
Every entry, every note, every review session rewires his brain to respond differently.
He doesn’t chase. He doesn’t force.
His identity is no longer attached to the last trade.
When he’s in drawdown, he doesn’t add new rules or abandon the plan.
He just keeps following the same system.
Because he’s seen the data, and the data says: stay the course.
And that is the process.
And once you have gotten into drawdown, followed your rules and plan, and traded your way back out of drawdown, doing exactly the same thing, in the live market, that is when it all starts to click.
That’s the shift every trader is chasing - when your nervous system finally trusts your plan more than your emotions.
It’s when probability stops being something you “believe in” and starts being something you’ve lived through.
Then the probabilities do work, and all you have to do is follow your plan, and you will make money.
This is what the top 5–10% of traders have learnt to do, and why they keep making money.
This is how you become the casino, and not the gambler.
Remember the first guy who tried to take the shortcut?
Even a fairly sensibly executed one, by all accounts.
And the calm and precision of the second trader, trading based on data and consistency.
This is why the process is the shortcut, and the only way you will ever become a successful trader.
Because once your psychology catches up with your strategy — you realise there was never a shortcut at all.
There was only the process all along.
Most traders don’t need a new system.
They need to follow the one they already have.
That’s what Process School is built for — to close the gap between knowing and doing.
See you there,
Fred
The part about the brain craving validation really hit home for me. I think most people underestimate how much ego gets tangled up in early wins. When you strng together a few profitable trades, it feels like you figured it out, but really you just havent been tested yet. The real growth happens when you stick to your system through drawdown and come out the oher side. Thats when trust actually develops.