It's so easy for trading to feel isolating and as if no one else is struggled/studied/sacrificed in search of consistent profitability.
Over the last few months especially, I have been a case study in how trading advice gets lost in translation.
The experienced, profitable trader's advice often sounds extremely cryptic or obvious. To them, they are distilling their trading experience concisely, but to everyone else, it is really sounds like a riddle or a temporary inspirational boost that's forgotten during the next draw-down.
I've meditated as a means to reduce stress and a lot of the meditation guides have a similar outlook. What I've come to realize is that a lot of the messages are just irrelevant... until they're not.
Through time, I realized that a lot of 'obvious' stuff that made me go "well duh" in my head were things that I was consciously aware of, but not unconsciously implementing during every repetition. I'm working to tighten the hatch so to speak now w/ repetition.
I've been doing 30 trades at a time, and then analyzing my results to see where I'm falling short and to come up with theories on how I can improve in the next 30 trades. I've realized it's hard AF to do the same setup 30x in a row, and w/ the help of the book Noise by Daniel Kahneman (_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment), I've started to cut back on the inconsistencies within my analysis.
I do think my chart reading is better than it has ever been, but executing consistently is something that I am still working on squaring away. I doubt it will be the last obstacle in my quest for consistent profitability, but it does feel like it'll be a huge weight off my shoulders if/when I knock it out.