About 3 months ago, a 22 year-old friend of a friend (we’ll call him Mike) asked if he could sit down with me and pick my brain about stock trading. I agreed, and we met for an hour over a couple of beers. At the end, Mike said to me: “I asked to discuss trading with you, and for the last hour you gave me great advice, but you said NOTHING about trading?”

Last week, I ran into Mike again. When I first saw him, he looked healthier and you could tell he lost some weight. He ran up to me and he gave me the biggest hug. He screamed: “Dude! You changed my life!” I said to him: “What?” He went on to tell me that the conversation we had 3 months earlier changed the entire way he looked and thought about things. He lost 20 pounds, found an “amazing new and encouraging” girlfriend, and landed a dream job at a financial firm.

Of course, the question you must be thinking is: “What the heck did you say to him Joe?” All I did was pass along some advice from the greatest trading book ever: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Yes, I know you must be thinking, just like my conversation with Mike, the book has NOTHING to do with trading. But that’s where you are wrong. The book has EVERYTHING to do with trading.

You can have the greatest trading strategy in the world, but if your head is not right, you are screwed as a trader. Actually, you are screwed period if your mind is weak because you won’t be able to focus and make decisions. I can go on forever about how Napoleon Hill’s book can help you as a trader, but you are going to have to read it yourself. There are so many great secrets to be found in the book, but I would be doing you a disfavor if I don’t let you discover them on your own. Buy it, read it, and when you are done, read it again, and again, and again! Your mind will be so strong, it will not only help your trading, but it will also help you to improve many areas of your life, just as it did with Mike.

I’ll leave you with one last story. Last fall, I spoke at a trade show and there was a man in the back of the room who stood there for an hour with his arms crossed. He was wearing a suit and his head was shaved. He was a pair of gloves and a Glock 9 away from looking like a hitman. After my talk, many people lined up to ask me trading questions. He approached me (with total fucking attitude) and said: “Why do you do all this?” I said: “Excuse me?” He said: “You’re a successful trader, you’re not selling anything, you have no software, no trading service, why the hell do you do all this?” I didn’t give the man the satisfaction of a response, but I’ll share it with you.

Meeting people like Mike is why I do all this. Knowing I helped to change someone’s life is one of the greatest feelings in the world. If I can help steer someone in the right direction, or share an experience that helps them make a small adjustment to their trading, trust me, there is NO amount of money greater than the feeling of knowing you helped someone. As Tony Robbins says: “The secret to living is giving.” It all makes sense to me now. If you are not sharing and giving back, then you are truly not living.

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