Andrew Aziz (Ph.D., PEng), a best-selling author, trader, and founder of Bear Bull Traders shares his secret to success and talks about staying mentally fit in times of distress.
In Andrew’s field of financial market trading, mental resilience is crucial. There are chances that trade will most likely fail more times than it will succeed, and a trader needs to fight the failures by maintaining a positive attitude throughout. This is a skill that everyone and not just traders, should learn if they want to survive in the race of life.
Resilience is a quality Andrew never thought he had until he reached his end goal. His day trading job started when he was laid off from his previous workplace. He was unemployed and embarrassed, not to mention he proceeded to lose all his savings and severance package to the market. Despite the rough patch, he didn’t give up and persisted. Eventually, circumstances led him to find another job, to pay the rent, while he still carried on with his trading.
“I kept waking up at 5 a.m. so I could trade from 6:30 to 8 before leaving for work. Did I know what was driving me at the time? Not really. Resilience is something you realize you have after the fact,” says Andrew.
According to Andrew, resilience is built successfully, once its opposite can be recognized: helplessness. Helplessness is a belief that says nothing can be done to improve a bad situation. And the first step of unlearning the habit is to be aware of it.
“Most of our day-to-day helplessness can be controlled by our own mind. I have found mindfulness and meditation to be a powerful tool to recognize my own feelings of helplessness,” says Andrew.
Andrew is a strong believer in being a part of a strong supportive community, to build a resilient personality. This is because when one person suffers, the whole community is there to support him through his tough times. Quite a few entrepreneurs are part of mastermind groups, all due to this very reason.
“That is why I founded Bear Bull Traders, an online community of traders. Occasionally, we are on the opposite side of each other’s trades and in direct competition with each other, but during hard times, the desire to genuinely help one another outshines any sense of competition in the community,” elaborates Andrew.