Reprogram Your Mind to Be a Profitable Trader in 2026

Most traders don't fail because they're bad at reading charts. They fail because their own mind is working against them. And if you don't reprogram the way that you think, this year will look, just like every other year. Blown accounts, broken dreams, and zero consistency. I've been trading for nine years, and in that time I have went from being an unprofitable trader, taking $100 trades while delivering doordash, to making millions of dollars and retiring my parents. But it wasn't chart time or trading psychology that made me successful. It was reprogramming my mind to that of a profitable trader. And in this video, I'm going to show you the five steps to reprogram yourself to become a profitable trader. This is not going to be your typical trading psychology video where you get advice like stay disciplined or stay consistent because it's not that easy. That's similar to telling someone to cheer up whenever they're feeling sad, when the entire reason they're sad is because they can't cheer up. So let's get right into step number one, understanding the system that you're trying to reprogram. First, you need to understand why trading feels so hard in the first place. You can't reprogram a machine if you don't know how it's wired. And it's not because you're weak or undisciplined or because you're stupid. It's because trading doesn't talk to the logical part of your brain. It talks to the part of your brain that's been keeping you alive for millions of years. You see, your brain doesn't see a trading loss as a number on a screen. It sees it as a threat. Why? Why? Well, because money is tied to the most fundamental human needs, safety, security and status. Instead, it asks you to wait. It asks you to accept losing money. It asks you to ignore every instinct telling you to take an action. Because most of the time, your instincts in trading will get you killed. And that's because in trading, everything has to do with money. And to you, money means rent, means bills, freedom, security, not being trapped in a job that you hate. But it goes even deeper than that. And there's a concept called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And it's just a simple model that says humans pursue layered needs. At the base, we need safety, food, shelter, stability, and the basic stuff. And once that's secure, we pursue esteem, or otherwise known as status, self respect and recognition from others. And then at the top is self actualization, which means becoming who we are capable of being. And trading touches all of these at once because it's related to our finances. It gives you safety through paying your bills. It gives you status through living a better lifestyle and having nicer things. But most importantly, it has a direct impact on self actualization. Not because money is everything, but because having money allows you to be the kind of person who has freedom, who controls their time, and who doesn't answer to anyone. And in order to get aligned with your true identity and figure out who you really are, you, you need to have freedom. Now, maybe you just want to become a monk and do this without money, but I doubt that's the case if you are learning to trade and watching this video. So because trading offers uncapped possibilities from money, freedom, and status, your mind attaches extreme importance to it very fast. And that makes every single decision feel harder than it should. And it's not that you're just a weak trader. What's really happening is there's a disconnect between what you want and what your brain is subconsciously trying to protect. You see, your brain doesn't rely on your strategy. It relies on protecting you. And the goal of reprogramming is to break out of that caveman like mindset where you know better, but you still go out and do stupid things and repeat the same mistakes again and again. So the first shift that you need to make is to create space between the feeling and the action. Now, it starts with this. Instead of reacting, you always pause before taking a trade and name the emotion that you're feeling. Now, whenever you say something like this is fear or this is frustration, you. You separate yourself and become an observer. You're no longer trading inside of the emotion, and instead you're watching it. Now from there, the goal is to create just a little bit of space between the feeling and the click. And believe it or not, I know this may sound silly, but this small pause can make a world of difference. Now, I recommend actually keeping a physical notepad by your desk and writing down the emotion every single time. And once you see what your brain is protecting and the patterns, you. You start to become aware and you can actually change what your train of thought is. And simply gaining this understanding of the system that we're trying to reprogram is vital. But understanding it alone doesn't mean anything if the program is broken. And this gets us right into step number two, which is that you can't reprogram a computer that is broken. Most people think they have a psychology problem when they actually have a clarity problem. You see, you can't reprogram your mind to follow a process if the process itself doesn't work or if the process isn't clear. So let me give you the hard truth. If you cannot state your win rate, state your average risk reward, and your overall profit expectancy, then your problem is proof and clarity, not psychology. And I see this so many times. Traders that want to just pick up a trading psychology book or watch a video like this one before they even have proof that they have a profitable trading system. Where, or worse, when they don't have a trading system at all. Now remember guys, anxiety and stress are your brain's defense mechanisms meant to keep you alive. And if you're just trading randomly without any proof that you know what you're doing, you will absolutely be stressed when trading, and rightfully so, because whenever you are trading without a system, that means you're most likely not going to make money. Okay? So to go out here and just push buttons and then say you have a psychology problem is ludicrous. So yes, if this is the case for you, you're going to be stressed. And whenever you're stressed, your decision making is worse. You, you don't think logically, you make a ton of mistakes, and overall it is impossible to see any meaningful success. This sounds crazy, I know, but the majority of traders that I see fall victim to this. It happens often because this new age of social media trading where people are exposed to this false reality and it pulls them into one of two common traps. The first is what I like to call the influencer trap. And this happens when traders mistake lifestyle proof for actual proof. Look, just because someone drives a nice car or post screenshots of a winning day doesn't mean they know how to trade consistently or that they make money in the market over time, or that their strategy even works. Yet so many new traders blindly follow these people and fail. And then you fall into the second trap, which is when you have a guru, often one that you bought a course from telling you something about you don't have mindset or you haven't been disciplined enough. And this is where you see people getting into these crazy methods of trying to become profitable, where they do everything from waking up at 4 in the morning with some extreme morning routine, all the way to trying to cold plunge their way to becoming a profitable trader, as if that's what's going to work instead of just having a proven edge in the market. Now if you're wondering why I'm able to read in your mind and articulate these situations that you've been through. It's because many years ago, I went through the same exact thing. So don't feel bad, don't feel stupid. It happens to everybody. But today, I want to help you avoid this. That way you can become successful much faster than I did. So here, here is what you're going to do right now to start reprogramming. I want you to ask yourself these three questions. First, can you explain your system in three to five steps out loud without rambling? Better yet, can you write it down on a business card? If not, then you don't have a real trading system. Second, I want you to ask yourself what makes you not take a trade? And if you can't answer that, your system has a back door for emotions to sneak in and, and you always have wiggle room. Third, do you have at least 100 trades of data showing that your strategy has an edge in the market? If you don't have these three things, then you are doing yourself a huge disservice by saying that you have a psychology problem. That's the case later in the video. I'm going to give you a full step by step system that is simple and proven. But first, let's talk about step number three, which is identifying the virus that causes these random losing streaks that keep you unprofitable. I remember whenever I was in my boom and bust cycle and meaning I knew everything that I needed to become profitable and would even be able to make some money. But I would always end up losing it all, likely in one day. And during this time, it was like something would literally just take a hold of me and all my logic would go out the window. And at the end of the day, I would look back and genuinely wonder, like, who was that guy? Who was that guy pushing those buttons? So in this step, I'm going to show you a simple trick that I use to overcome this. First, you need to understand what I like to call the science of losing. After a loss, your brain treats it like a problem that needs fixing. Your brain craves relief. And in trading, that relief often looks like one thing taking another trade. Naturally, our brains are programmed to do something to fix a dangerous situation. In most situations, that's just running away. But in trading, you can't run away. And the only thing you can do is click. That's why stopping after a loss feels almost impossible. And this is exactly how revenge trading happens. And taking random trades moving your stop loss immediately, entering back in after your stop, loss is hit. Or in other words, acting like an idiot who you're going to hate later in the day. Now, all of this comes back to the same place. Your brain is trying so hard to resolve a threat. But what if the problem is what you perceive as a threat? Now, we'll get to that later. But I want to be clear, if you don't slow down in this situation, this is the exact moment that most traders start to lose control. And this is where the real damage begins. It'll start with a normal loss, which again, is totally normal. All good trading strategies are going to have losses, as you and I both know. But when you haven't reprogrammed yourself, this to your brain feels like a threat. And then this threat triggers stress, which builds a sense of urgency. Now, your brain screams at you to fix it, and that is whenever you take an impulsive trade. Now, without understanding this, traders subconsciously believe that that they're actually fixing something whenever they're actually compounding the damage. And over time, this creates something called loss aversion. Now, loss aversion causes predictable things. You take profits too early because green feels like relief. You let losers run because closing actually is painful more than watching the number that is negative get bigger. A bunch of illogical stuff, and you end up entering trades hoping not to lose, instead of just executing your proven setup. And this goes far deeper than trading, because if you don't fix this, it can ruin your entire life. Life. Because this is why people stay in relationships and jobs that they hate, simply to avoid the possible pain on the other side of change. And just to highlight the difference between someone stuck in a repeating loop and someone who knows how to move forward after losses, here is how each of their mindsets sound. Now, a beginner might think, I hope I don't lose this. I hate whenever my stop gets hit. But a more advanced trader thinks like, this is an A plus setup. It meets all my rules. I know my stats. Over time, I've risked an amount that isn't damaging. And in other words, they have truly accepted the risk. This is why some people become paralyzed after losing streaks, even though that losing streaks are completely normal. In trading, it's because they interpret these normal situations as danger. Now, the first step to reprogramming this reflex is to install a simple habit of journaling every single trade as soon as you take it. Don't wait until the end of the day. Do it as soon as you take it. And you can do this with the notepad that I mentioned. Earlier in step one, where you write down the emotion before you take the trade. So immediately after the trade closes, especially after a losing trade, you need to hand write, not journal. On a system. You could do that too, but you need to hand write answers to these five prompts before you even consider taking another trade. First, why did I take this trade? Give the real reason, not some vague label like I was bullish or I took my guru signal. No, we need an actual clear reason. Next, ask, did it follow my rules? Yes or no? No gray area. Then if not, what rule did I break? One sentence is all that's needed. You don't need to write a sad poem about your trade. The goal here is awareness, not rumination. And last but not least, you need to ask yourself, would I take this exact trade again tomorrow? This process forces awareness, and I promise you, if you actually do this for every trade, you will automatically become a much better trader. So, for two main reasons. One, you will get absolutely sick and tired of yourself for making stupid decisions. And two, it overrides your caveman brain for just long enough to force awareness and get through the mental minefield you have to cross after you take a losing trade. Over time, this will program your brain to associate your stop loss getting hit with a normal activity, which is similar to whenever you go to the gym and you tear down your muscles and then you replenish them with protein. This is literally how you get your brain stronger as a trader. And this may sound boring, but if you don't install a rule after a loss, the default that is programmed into your natural brain is revenge. Trading this simple moment of awareness overcomes all of this. Now, this is great, but it alone will not reprogram your mind to become profitable simply from getting better at losing. Because in order to win, you need to remove the pressure causing you to make mistakes and lose in the first place. Which brings us to step number four. Removing the pressure that causes you to make mistakes. I want you to think of a time where you felt very nervous to do something. Maybe it was approaching a girl. Maybe it was public speaking. Maybe it was a job interview. How did it go? Do you think it would have gone better if you would have been cool, calm and confident? Yeah, it absolutely would have. Because, yes, in many things in life, you have to push through the nervousness and take action. But trading is not one of them. And the good news is that you don't have to do this, because there is a stupid, simple way that you can cut your trading stress by 50% or more. Guaranteed. First, you need to understand what happens when trading becomes too important and you start getting nervous. This happens whenever it stops being a skill that you're building and becomes the emotional solution for all of your problems. You can't reprogram your mind when the hard drive is at 100%. And whenever I say importance here, I mean the emotional weight that you assign to outcomes. For example, if I told you to walk on a plank that is sitting on the ground for 50ft, chances are you would do it, no problem. But if I told you to walk on a plank that was a th.000ft off the ground between two skyscrapers, chances are you're going to die. And you know this, which means the stakes would be extremely high. And when the stakes feel too high high, your nervous system shifts into survival mode. And this is where you lose control over the most basic decisions. Now there is a very simple saying that encapsulates all of this. Stress makes you stupid. So how do we solve this and remove the importance from our trading? It really comes down to asking yourself one question. Am I risking too much money on each trade? If you were able to cut your position size to the smallest possible size, say one micro contract, most of your psychological issues would be gone immediately. This is why people can be demo ballers and make millions of dollars on a demo account. But whenever there's real money on the line, they crumble. And that's why the most easy and pragmatic way to remove pressure on yourself is quite literally just sizing down on your trades. A lot of people don't want to do this because they know deep down that this also reduces the potential of profits. But in all reality, these potential profits are just as much, if not more dangerous than than the fear of loss. For example, on a $50,000 prop firm account, this costs you anywhere from 30 to $100. Most of the trades that people are taking aren't risking the entire account. So let's say they're risking, I don't know, 1/10 of the account. This means that they're risking anywhere from 3 to $10 on an individual trade. But these people will literally be shaking and physically tense, leaned into their computer, ruining the mood of their entire day. If they have a bad day in the markets and lose an insignificant amount of money. The reason for this is not because of the loss. It's because they know that if they're able to get this down, they actually can make life changing money because they're on a prop account. So it's not Just about losing money, it's also about the potential of winning. So sizing down works in two ways. It reduces stress because the losses are smaller. And it removes the emotional distortion of hitting the lottery, which reduces urgency and and greed. Now, the goal is to reach a calm, neutral execution state where you can build mental muscle memory. Because the truth is, if you are in a state of struggling with trading, it is very unlikely that you're just going to go from that to an overnight millionaire. You need to go through the motions and build a process and build real confidence before you're going to go out there and make a ton of money. And most of you guys are nodding your head, agreeing with me while I say this. Yet whenever it comes time to trade in the next trading session you're in, you're going to be hesitant to cut down your risk significantly. The only reason you would be hesitant is because you're subconsciously wanting to believe that you're going to go from where you're at now to being hyper successful. And this is the same reason that you see people falling for these gimmicks online. Now, in order to reprogram yourself and become successful in a business where 90% of people fail, you are going to have to do what 90% of people aren't wanting to do. Another way that people can place extra pressure on themselves is by the way that they structure their lives. Now, it's relatively simple. Don't quit your job as soon as you get a funded account or even as soon as you get your first payout. You need to prove some real consistency and save a buffer of at least six months of living expenses. That way. Trading isn't from a place of life or death. This is why it's so hard to trade whenever you're broke. And I know this because there was a time in my life where I was living literally trading to make ends meet while I was delivering doordash. And I can tell you that that state of mind is not that of a profitable trader. It's a mindset of scarcity. It makes you stress, it makes you do all the things that are keeping you unprofitable. And yes, of course I was able to make it out. So I'm not going to say it's impossible, but it was a lot of pain that I had to go through. It was a long time and I don't want you guys to have to go through that. So I'm not saying it's impossible to go from zero to hero. There are these stories, but it's not necessary. And it's much more difficult and stressful than it ever needs to be to be. And a lot of people get stuck in this area and they never make it out. And another thing about trading is if you build bad habits, if you put yourself in these situations where, you know, maybe you're trading for life or death circumstances, most likely you're going to be stressed and make a lot of mistakes. When you make mistakes, you start to build trauma and it's like you're increasing the difficulty of ever becoming successful when if you just do things the right way and reprogram your brain, the being patient, doing things how you should, this can take a matter of months to maybe a year rather than taking years or months, maybe never working out at all. So before you jump the gun and try to become a full time trader, please make sure that you have a good foundation to build on. But we've talked about understanding the system that we're reprogramming, how to avoid spiraling into losing streaks and how to remove pressure. Next, I want to get right into step number four, simplifying everything. Now here's the part that most traders skip. You can't just fix psychology while trading a strategy that has a bunch of wiggle room because wiggle room is where gambling hides. You see, in order to reprogram your mind, you need to write new code for it to follow. As I've built smart trader AI and I'm building another software company, I've worked alongside a lot of software developers and the way that their brains are wired is that of a profitable trader. Because they think in if then processes. If this happens, then I do that. If this doesn't happen, then I do nothing. Whenever you're programming, you have to be very, very clear in the processes that you're creating. And everything has to be thought of 10 steps ahead and well articulated. Yet in trading we see a lot of influencers teaching strategies online that are very complicated and have a lot of wiggle room. And a lot of this is just so they have an excuse to why they're wrong. But it doesn't help you any. This just helps them be able to explain why they lost another trade. Now if your strategy or your rule set isn't crystal clear, then your brain is also always going to have room to negotiate. And whenever your brain negotiates, it's going to always negotiate towards relief instead of long term profitability. Now, whatever relief means to you in that moment could be different. It could be fomoing into a trade to relieve the pain of missing out, it could be cutting your trade before it hits the target to relieve the pain of possibly losing some unrealized gains. It could be hesitating on a good trade. And in order to avoid the pain of a possible loss, and so on and so on, there's a lot of different situations. So in order to reprogram yourself into a profitable trader, your strategy needs to be stupid, simple, rule based and undeniable. Now this is becoming increasingly hard for newer traders because there are so many strategies that are marketed by these trading gurus. Since trading has become so popular in the last couple of years, it seems like every new influencer wants to make up some new complicated strategy with some secret that only they hold. Now, most of this is just in order to sell you a course. So one trader will take one strategy from another trader and then they'll add their own style to it, which really just makes it more complicated. And then this compounds again and again until we've got these ridiculous strategies where people are even now counting candles or trading based off of other nonsense that is similar to this. I mean, there's some crazy stuff online. Now, you need to be very careful to avoid these complicated strategies where there is no absolute if, then process. Because if all it is is a list of random trading concepts that cause you to enter a trade, or if your process is simply just looking on all time frames, trying to decide which way you think the market's going to go, and then looking for a market structure shift, then this isn't even a strategy. And there's no way to actually have an edge in the market because you're just taking random decisions that are subjective based on how you feel in the current situation. Instead, what you want to look for is a strategy that consists of two very simple things. One, key levels where you want to do business in the market, you have a very simple way and repeatable of marking out these key levels. And two, confirmation to enter a trade. Usually this is going to be on a lower time frame than the one you found the key level on. And this is, this can be very simple, like a market structure shift or a fair value gap or something similar. Now, I'm not going to get into strategies right now. If you don't have a strategy, we'll get to that later. But the point is you need a simple strategy and system that removes decision fatigue. That way you are not deciding if you should or shouldn't trade. You're just letting the system make the decisions for you. And whenever you follow a system like this, your brain stops negotiating. It stops looking for relief, and it just executes. And look, the strategy doesn't need to be perfect or have some insanely high win rate. It just needs to be clear and proven to have an edge in the market. Remember, without clarity of your mission, your emotions will always take over. Now, whenever Navy SEALs who are absolute experts at what they do go into a situation, they've debriefed extensively on every possible outcome and know exactly what to do beforehand. Because they know that even though they're experts, once the bullets start flying, you're done for. If you don't have a plan. But even with a clear and simple strategy, there is one more step that most traders skip. And this is where 90% of traders get to right before they give up. And it's the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Let's hop into step number five, which is redefining survival. This brings us to the final and most important shift. Whenever it comes to reprogramming your brain, people love to say, raid like a robot. You're not a robot, you're a human. You will feel emotions. And the final step of reprogramming is to brainwash yourself with a new definition of survival. You see, the real goal isn't emotionless trading. The real goal is that emotions become lighter because your brain stops treating each trade like survival. Right now, you. You probably define survival in trading as, I need this trade to win, or I need to pass this fund to challenge, or I need to prove that I'm not behind. I need to make money fast. I need to become profitable. And whenever that is your definition of survival, every loss is a threat. And this makes it literally impossible to succeed because you are always in a mindset of scarcity. Reprogramming yourself means redefining survival as thinking in decades. Because whenever you think in decades, you think in more second, third, and fourth order consequences. Now, this is a simple concept that I learned from Charlie Munger, who is a billionaire and partners with Warren Buffett. I learned this from reading all of his speeches. And there are a lot of mental models that he uses. And this is one of the most powerful ones. And it's simple. It's just based on not thinking on only the direct outcome of an event, but instead thinking. Kind of like the butterfly effect, for example. If you take a trade that is outside of your system and you end up winning, you might get excited because you think in the short term. Now, truly thinking in the long term, you would be forced to think of the repercussions of this. Because if you take a winning trade that is outside your system and you feel good emotion for making money, well then you're training yourself to do this in the future again. And if you do this in the future again, you're most likely going to do it with extra risk, which will eventually cause you to blow up because you're taking random trades outside of your system. Now take it a step further. The third order is that blowing up like this causes an insane amount of trauma that is now much harder to overcome. And now you've dug yourself into a hole. And these are the kind of spirals that people go into where you hear of these horror stories of people losing their entire net worth to trading and becoming addicted and depressed and trading for decades without making any money because they're on this perpetual hamster wheel of short term thinking, completely unaware that they have to think past the immediate success situation. And whenever we're talking about reprogramming ourselves, we need a very simple model that makes this real. And that is that a good trading day is a day where you followed and respected your plan and risk management, regardless if you made any money on the day. And a bad trading day is a day where you broke your rules even if you made money. That is the way that you reprogram your mind. You train your survival brain to protect the process instead of of the outcome. Because you're never going to overcome the way that your brain is wired. As we know, the human body is the eighth wonder of the world and is continuously evolving. I mean, for sake, we've literally come from discovering fire to creating AI. That is how powerful your brain is. You are not going to overcome it fully, but instead you can reprogram it. That way, instead of protecting you from success, it is protecting you from making mistakes. You have to leverage these things in your favor rather than trying to overcome them. That is how you fight smarter and not harder. And even once you've done this, a loss is still going to hurt. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm just smiling ear to ear whenever I lose money, because I'm not. It's never fun. But the difference is that it doesn't emotionally hijack you and cause you to make the decisions that keep you unprofitable. And on the flip side, it also makes winning not as fun. Because a lot of you guys don't realize this yet, but the dream that sold you into trading of this wolf what Wall street lifestyle where you have a Huge day and go pop bottles and party all night for the most part, isn't true. Now, of course, yes, you're going to enjoy your life and have fun with the money you make, but it's not exciting whenever you adopt this way of thinking. Instead, trading becomes rather boring. Now, my eight figure mentor told me something many years ago that sticks with me to this day and that is that boring trading is profitable trading. But the good news is you don't need anything extravagant to change your life. In fact, something simple and very small, just like 10k a month, can be life changing. Whenever it comes to a skill that doesn't trap you in a job that you hate or take up all your time. Because money is cool, but money from something that gives you freedom, that is what's actually going to change your life. And getting back to the hierarchy of needs that we talked about earlier, this is the way you need to think about it so you're motivated for the right things rather than just material things. And from there, yes, you can scale to much higher amount amounts of income. I'm all about getting richer. You guys know that if you're a part of my brand. But the only way that you're going to get there is by building the process first. Now, another benefit of all of this is that it will reprogram you as a person outside of trading. Because that same discipline, the same emotional awareness, the same high level of thinking that makes you a good trader will also make you a better person in life, a better leader, a better partner, a better friend, a better parent, or quite literally, anything that you want to do. This is why Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and and many of the other greatest hedge fund managers and traders are also thought of as philosophers. Because in order to succeed in something as difficult as trading, you have to reprogram your brain. And whenever you reprogram your brain, you will see the world through a different lens. Now, I know we talked about strategy earlier in the video and for many of you watching this, you may have realized that you don't have a clear or proven strategy. So if you want to learn my full system, trade it, live with your mentor five days a week, have every single trade that you take reviewed to make sure that you're doing things correctly. And get access to my proprietary smart trader AI software. I'll leave a link in the top of the description where you can apply for direct mentorship. Due to the direct nature of this program, spots are limited and if the link in the description does not work well, I'M sorry, that means there are no seats remaining in this enrollment. But if it does, then go ahead and apply. And if you're accepted, I look forward to working with you. If you've made it this far, you know everything you need to reprogram yourself as a trader and quite frankly, as a person. I hope you take this seriously and start treating trading like a professional. Thank you guys for watching. Make sure to subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.