What if awareness, not skill, was your missing edge?

Tradetopia Field Notes — Issue #9

Reality Is Just Perception

Sometimes I wonder how many of our problems are even real.

Not because they don’t feel real, they do, but because they only exist from one angle.

Most people think they’re seeing reality. They’re not. They’re seeing their version of it.

Every chart, every argument, every story we tell ourselves, all of it passes through a filter we built years ago. Childhood, trauma, wins, losses, voices we absorbed from people we stopped listening to but still hear subconsciously.

We don’t trade what we see.

We trade what we believe we see.

I learned that lesson in basic training.

Forty people in one room. Sleep-deprived, hungry, getting screamed at for breathing wrong.

Everyone was more or less was exposed to the same environment but each person’s experience and attitude were wildly different.

I realized something, it’s not the situation that breaks you.

It’s how you frame it in your head.

One guy saw punishment, the saw preparation, and I saw programming.

That’s all it takes for three people to live in different worlds while standing in the same one.

Trading’s no different.

You take a loss and one voice says “you suck,” while another says “that was data.”

You miss a move and one side of you spirals while the other just screenshots it and adds it to the journal.

Same market, different mind.

That’s why trading psychology isn’t some woo-woo concept. It’s literally how you translate reality.

If your perception is warped, you’ll create losses that didn’t have to exist.

You’ll start fighting ghosts that were never in your way.

Lately I’ve been asking myself a simple question whenever the emotions hit:

Sometimes the answer changes everything.

Maybe it’s not bad luck, maybe it’s feedback for scenarios you hadn’t been exposed to.

Maybe it all wasn’t a waste of time, maybe you have to build from scratch again because you needed a better foundation.

That shift of perception doesn’t make the problem disappear, it gives you a different vantage point to solve it from.

Reality is not fixed.

It bends to your awareness.

The second I realized that, life felt less reactive and more of a game to find the silver lining.

Losses stopped feeling personal. Wins stopped feeling lucky.

It was all just feedback.

A mirror showing me how aware I was willing to be.

Filed: October 2025 | Location: Behind the Screens — Chicago, IL