The Next Chapter for The Anchor Report
On the transition from documenting performance to living it, and the necessity of change.
The one-year anniversary of The Anchor Report is quickly approaching. I thought this was the right moment to share what I have in mind for the publication for the upcoming year and beyond.
As most of you know, I started The Anchor Report out of a desire to share what I had learned in my search to understand why some people are able to perform at an elite level in their careers, while also maintaining a balanced existence.
A little under a decade ago, I changed careers, leaving behind corporate and enterprise building to trade the financial markets. The transition into my new trade was both exciting and intimidating. Although I embraced the change, I quickly found out that it would be a much bigger challenge than I had anticipated. Both personal and professional hurdles reared their heads soon thereafter, and I knew immediately that I needed to adapt to a new reality.
That process of adaptation started with mindfulness. Initially, it was just to calm my anxiety, but I soon learned there was much more to it than simply calming down. I continued the practice to help me become more aware and present in my life experience. The results were evident after a little more than a year. But while my personal experience had improved, I continued to face plenty of professional challenges. I was simply not performing as I needed to, as I wanted to, and as I knew I could.
That inability to perform led me to look further, eventually driving me to the study of performance science. I studied every topic that could impact both my psychology and physiology, diving deeply into neuroscience, biology, psychology, and even philosophy. For a short time, I also worked with a performance coach. Yet, time passed and the challenges remained. I understood on the surface what needed to be done, which included making significant changes to my psyche, my nervous system, and my physiology. This meant overhauling everything from the way I perceived life and experienced reality, to the structure of my routines, work habits, and life systems.
Why such a big deal, you may ask? Well, that is what I thought before I started trading. Even years after trying to succeed, I still find it intriguing.
But trading is fundamentally different from almost every other career path, and it is exponentially more difficult when you start with a mental wiring that was not built for it. In the corporate world, you can often force an outcome through sheer effort, influence, or structural leverage. The market, however, is entirely indifferent to your effort. It demands absolute emotional detachment and a total surrender to probabilities. Pivoting to this later in life is exceptionally challenging because it requires actively dismantling decades of ingrained corporate conditioning. You have to rewire a brain that was previously rewarded for control, teaching it instead to operate comfortably and clearly in a state of constant, unmanageable uncertainty.
Around the spring of last year, I finally began to see and understand this more clearly. I learned that although you may grasp concepts intellectually, it takes significant time to actually integrate them into your system—to relearn behavioral patterns and rewire the brain. Even then, when they are integrated, they are not always readily available to your conscious self.
That precise realization is where The Anchor Report came from. It was an attempt to document for myself, and share with others, what I had learned and what I needed to integrate. In the process, I also started to work with a handful of clients, applying the learnings and the system I created around elite performance and decision-making under uncertainty.
Today, a little over a year from that realization and close to a year of writing articles, I am finding it a challenge to say more on the topic without becoming repetitive and redundant. There is already plenty of content on this subject. But above all, I now have a clear understanding of what is required to perform at an elite level, and I must now apply it fully—to myself and to the few people with whom I have been working.
Maybe one day I will bring it all together in a book. The skeleton already exists. Maybe, but who knows. For now, my focus is on full and applied integration. Challenges remain, and I am still far off from anything that resembles elite performance, but I have certainly improved and leveled out my baseline. Now comes the last mile.
As I wrote in one of my first pieces on impermanence, everything is in a constant state of flux. Most things do not last forever, others are in a constant state of transformation, and indistinguishably, nothing stays exactly the same. From our bodies, to our minds, to our lives, we live in cycles of constant change. Now, the time for that change has come to The Anchor Report.
Starting today, I will no longer publish on a predetermined schedule. I will write when there is something worth saying and when the work has earned my attention. The subject matter will also broaden to reflect more fully who I am and what I value: ideas, social commentary, books, television and film, food, dining, and travel. Not every piece will be for everyone. That is no longer the objective. The idea is to publish work that is honest, considered, and worth sharing.
Thanks for reading over the past year, and until next time.