Righteousness Is Beautiful
"Then what makes a beautiful human being? Isn't it the presence of human excellence? Young friend, if you wish to be beautiful, then work diligently at human excellence. And what is that? Observe those whom you praise without prejudice. The just or the unjust? The just. The even-tempered or the undisciplined? The even-tempered. The self-controlled or the uncontrolled? The self-controlled. In making yourself that kind of person, you will become beautiful — but to the extent you ignore these qualities, you'll be ugly, even if you use every trick in the book to appear beautiful."
— Epictetus, Discourses
Tough to compare today's meditation to trading. We are looking at beauty as an internal process here, rather than what looks beautiful to the onlooker. So beauty should be contingent on the choices, actions and attributes that we develop.
So as traders we make the right choices by only entering trades that fully meet the rules/criteria for our strategies. We then follow this up with our actions once the trades go live, by managing those trades to completion. This means we are patient, disciplined and fully focused using the correct trading mindset; all key attributes to how we develop as traders and become consistent and profitable over a period of time. Trading this way can be boring and predictable of course! Rinse and repeat; know your strategies inside out and back to front; down time when nothing fully meets your criteria etc. All these things will test your patience! Trading is not a get rich quick scheme, but a slow burner leading to regular profitability.
So let's make the right choices and stick to our intended actions and make our trading beautiful!