Recent trading thoughts - Accepting the losses that were supposed to happen.

In the long journey of trading, what needs to be clarified the most may not be how to make a profit, but how to correctly view the losses that are bound to come.
Most of these are not mistakes, but rather inevitabilities.
When you enter the planned pullback area after confirming a turn at a certain level according to the rules, but encounter an adjustment that is too deep; or when you decisively follow a breakout, but the market immediately reverses and knocks you out — these losses are clearly labeled: "system losses".
They are the "trial and error cost zone" that you reserved for yourself at the beginning of your strategy design. This is part of the rules, not your mistake.
Therefore, long-term trading performance is by no means a simple addition of short-term wins and losses. Short-term profits or losses are accompanied by significant randomness; a lucky "buy at the lowest point" and a stop-loss triggered by following the rules have no inherent value difference in a single instance.
You should not doubt yourself for consecutive short-term losses, just as you should not be overly pleased with a few lucky profits; they are a necessary process before the dust of probability settles, the very rhythm of the system's breathing.
The real watershed lies in the long term. If your capital curve still fails to show a steady upward trend after traversing enough market cycles, and instead continues to deteriorate, then the essence of the problem has transcended from "right or wrong in a single instance" to an inquiry about "system efficiency."
The predicament at this time can rarely be simply attributed to "poor strategy" or "wrong timing."
It is a systemic imbalance of a complex system: it could be that your risk tolerance no longer matches market fluctuations, it could be that your mindset has quietly distorted execution under long-term pressure, or it could be that the strategy itself is gradually failing in a changing market, while you remain oblivious.
At this point, what needs to be examined is no longer the parts, but the entire ecosystem—from cognition, to rules, and then to the full chain of execution and feedback.
Therefore, a mature trader has a clear ruler in their heart. One end measures and calmly accepts those "planned losses", viewing them as necessary tuition fees on the path to truth; the other end remains vigilant, alert to the worthless "unplanned losses" that arise from systemic disorder.