Where To Find Joy
"Joy for human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in: acts of kindness to other human beings, disdain for the stirrings of the senses, identifying trustworthy impressions, and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it."
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
When we look to compare today's meditation to trading, it will be similar to what it actually says, in the final quote; "The Stoics simply mean to help us find our essence--to experience the joy of our proper human work."
Our essence is "an indispensable quality of something." So in trading for example, it comes from finding the quality of our trading strategies, which become indispensable, due to their profitability over a period of time. We can take great satisfaction and joy, when we execute our trades exactly as planned, through regular practice as we get better and better and become more confident and consistent in our trading.
Sticking exactly to the rules/criteria for our strategies, based on the historical stats/data that we use, means that the probability of the trades going our way, are stacked in our favour; which of course gives us our edge.
This is how to find "the joy of our proper human work" through trading.