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It has been more than five years since I first entered the world of trading, and one thing I can say with complete honesty is that it has been far more difficult than I ever expected.

If somebody had told me back then that the hardest part wouldn’t be understanding the market, but understanding myself, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. Because when I started, psychology wasn’t something I cared about. I wanted a strategy. A good one. Something simple and profitable. Something that would finally give me the freedom I was looking for. And freedom was the reason I started. Not luxury... Not sports cars... Not social media lifestyles... Freedom... The freedom to choose how I spend my time. The freedom to stop worrying about money. The freedom to build a life that felt like mine.

I didn't come into trading because I was fascinated by financial markets. I wasn't sitting around reading economic reports or studying charts for fun. I wasn't obsessed with currencies, stock indices, or technical analysis.

I was obsessed with freedom.

I am just a girl from a small Baltic country trying to figure out what she wanted from life. Who found trading the same way many people do. Late at night... Alone... Sitting in front of a laptop in a quiet room that felt bigger than it should have. Watching videos, scrolling through comment sections. Reading forums, opening one tab after another and searching for something different without fully knowing what I was trying to escape from. At the time, trading looked like the answer to everything.

I wasn't unhappy...At least I don't think I was. But there was always this feeling that life was happening according to a script I hadn't written myself. Study – work – pay bills – wait for the weekend. And then repeat... Everything looked normal from the outside. But inside, I couldn’t stop thinking that there had to be something more. Not more money but more freedom. More ownership over my own life, more choice. At the time, trading looked like the answer to all of it and the deeper I went into that world, the more convincing it became.

Everywhere I looked there were payout certificates, profit screenshots, funded account announcements, and stories of people quitting their jobs. Stories of people changing their lives. Stories of people who looked completely ordinary before trading and somehow seemed completely different afterwards. The message was always the same. Learn a strategy + follow the rules + stay disciplined = become profitable. Simple. I believed it completely. And honestly, why wouldn't I? Nobody was showing the years in between, nobody was showing themselves staring at a screen at midnight questioning every decision they had made that day, nobody talked about the losses, nobody talked about the emotional rollercoaster, nobody talked about the frustration of doing everything you thought was right and still watching your account disappear, nobody was showing themselves blowing accounts and nobody was showing themselves crying in frustration or wondering whether they were the problem. They showed the destination not the road and when you’re standing at the beginning of something, that’s usually enough.

So, I started doing what most beginners do. I bought mentorships, joined trading communities, watched endless webinars, filled notebooks with notes. Studied charts for hours; I genuinely believed that if I just worked hard enough, eventually I would get there.

I still remember one mentorship session in particular. The mentor was explaining how money compounds over time. He was talking about growing accounts, increasing position sizes, and eventually withdrawing profits consistently. The lesson itself wasn’t complicated but somewhere in the middle of it, I stopped listening. My imagination took over and, in my head, I was already planning my future. "Six months from now, I could have £10,000 in my account." "I could quit my job." "I could finally stop worrying and finally breath." Everything seemed possible and everything suddenly felt possible as I wasn't thinking about probabilities and I wasn’t thinking about risk, I wasn’t even thinking about trading. I was thinking about a future version of myself. A version that seemed so close I could almost reach out and touch it. I was completely convinced that I had found the opportunity that would change my life. Did that happen straightaway as I thought? Of course not. Because reality was far more complicated than the dream being sold. I wasn’t learning because I was projecting a future, I wasn’t buying a strategy, but I was buying hope and hope can be a powerful thing. Powerful enough to keep you going. Powerful enough to convince you that success is much closer than it really is.