Pain Trade

On Wall Street, traders talk about the "pain trade."

It's the outcome nobody wants because they're positioned for something else.

Ironically, it's often the direction the market eventually goes.

Lately, I've been thinking about how the pain trade applies to life.

Ten years ago, during my midlife crisis, I found myself confronting something I had spent decades trying to outrun.

Carl Jung called it "the shadow."

The hidden part of ourselves we don't want to acknowledge.

The fears.

The insecurities.

The stories we tell ourselves.

For me, the shadow was this:

I was the not-rich girl surrounded by rich kids.

Growing up in a small Beverly Hills apartment with my single mom, I hated admitting how much that affected me.

So I overcompensated.

• I chased achievement.

• Prestige.

• Titles.

• Wall Street.

• Money.

• Success.

And for a while, it worked.

• I got the degrees.

• I landed the jobs.

• I made it into the rooms I once dreamed about entering.

But something still felt off.

I had made it into the room, but I didn't fully feel like I belonged there.

That was my shadow.

What Jung understood is that the things we refuse to confront don't disappear.

They quietly run our lives underneath the surface.

Until one day, the discomfort becomes too loud to ignore.

What I eventually realized was that my pain wasn't coming from being unsuccessful.

It was coming from building my identity around someone else's definition of success.

The story that achievement would make me feel secure.

The story that money would erase insecurity.

The story that external success would create internal peace.

It didn't.

The real pain trade wasn't leaving Wall Street.

The real pain trade was questioning the identity I had spent decades building.

Maybe I wasn't supposed to keep climbing.

Maybe I was supposed to start over.

Maybe the thing I loved wasn't prestige.

Maybe it was helping people solve problems.

Maybe becoming a financial advisor wasn't a career change at all.

Maybe it was becoming who I was supposed to be all along.

That's the pain trade.

The thing you most resist may contain the lesson you most need to learn.

The story you're afraid to question may be the very thing holding you back.

So if you're going through a period where something no longer fits...

Where you feel restless, uncertain, or stuck...

Maybe you're not falling apart.

Maybe you're staring directly at your own pain trade.

While there are fewer shadows during the summer months, it's the best time to reflect.

Happy Summer!

Tiffany Kent

Your Friendly Wealth Engagement Guide

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