What Every Top 1% Investor (and athlete) Knows But Doesn’t Say Out Loud

A mindset shift to help you outperform the rest of the year, yes seriously.

Tom Brady calls it a favorite book. Not because it’s trendy. Not because it’s cool. But because it helped him mold his mind into what it is today. And it has worked wonders for me too. I’d advise you all to read at some point.

What is this mystery book about investing?

Well it’s not about investing at all.

That book is The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.

And Ruiz didn’t write this book for traders or fund managers. But read it at the right moment in your investing journey, and it hits like a rebalance to your operating system. A refresh for your brain, your heart, and your soul.

Markets are full of noise. This book clears the signal. It works for me at least.
And if you take it seriously, it’ll rewire the mental scaffolding that real alpha sits on: clarity, emotional control, discipline, and durability.

Here’s how the four agreements show up in investing, and how most people violate them without even knowing. This is a short one. Happy Sunday friends. The world is getting more volatile, not less and so keep your mind tight.

Be Impeccable With Your Word

“The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human. It is the tool of magic. But like a sword, it can create or destroy.”

Ruiz wasn’t talking about slogans or self-talk tips. He meant this literally. Your words cast spells. They shape your perception. They shape your actions. And in markets, where clarity is edge, what you say to yourself becomes everything.

Language is how your mindset takes form. Talk in absolutes and you’ll lock yourself into them. Talk in frustration and your decisions will follow that tone. Most traders aren’t wrecked by bad analysis. They’re wrecked by the story they tell themselves after a loss.

We’ve all heard the worst of it echo in our own heads.
“I always screw this up.”
“I’m terrible at exits.”
“I knew better, but I’m just not disciplined enough.”

That’s not humility. That’s sabotage in disguise. It feels honest, but it’s corrosive.

Being impeccable with your word isn’t about toxic positivity. It’s not about pretending things are fine when they’re not. It’s about telling the truth without turning it into a weapon.

Try this instead:
“I rushed that entry. I can slow down next time and wait for confirmation.”
“I missed the exit, but I protected capital. I’m learning.”
“That loss stings, but the lesson is useful. I’m still leveling up.”

This is how you speak when you’re building yourself.
Not sugarcoating, not beating yourself up. Just clean, clear, and forward-moving.

Because in this game, language isn’t just reflection. It’s reinforcement. The way you speak, especially when no one’s listening, is the foundation for how you think, how you trade, and how long you last.

So speak like someone becoming who they said they’d be.
Because if you don’t, you’ll keep trading like someone stuck in who they used to be.

Don’t Take Anything Personally

“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”

Ruiz wasn’t saying to be indifferent. He was saying to be free. Free from the weight of other people’s projections. Free from the stories you tell yourself when something doesn’t go your way.

Most people carry that weight into markets. They make the tape personal. The outcome becomes a reflection of their worth. That’s when they start trading their ego instead of the setup. Ego will kill you.

The market doesn’t care about your entry. It doesn’t care about your goals or how badly you needed that trade to work. It’s not rooting for you and it’s not plotting against you. It just moves.

But your ego? It wants to assign meaning.
You miss a move and feel embarrassed.
You take a loss and start spiraling.
Someone mocks your position and suddenly you’re second-guessing everything.

This is how smart investors become reactive. You’re no longer evaluating risk. You’re defending your identity. Tailspin engaged.

Ruiz said that when you take things personally, you make yourself a victim. You give away your power. In markets, that looks like overtrading, revenge trading, and chasing validation from the scoreboard.

Not taking things personally doesn’t mean detaching from your work. It means detaching from the emotional story. The result doesn’t define you. The opinions don’t define you.

What the market does is not the truth. What someone says about your trade is not the truth. It’s noise. Let it pass.

You are not your last loss. You are not your P&L. You are not the quarterly chart.

You are your process. You are your discipline. You are the one showing up, refining, adapting, improving.

So take the feedback. Use the data. Make the adjustment. Then let go of the judgment.

The minute you stop needing the market or your P&L to validate you is the minute you start seeing it with clarity. And that’s when the real work begins.

Don’t Make Assumptions

“We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything… We make assumptions and believe they are the truth.”

Assumptions are the stories we tell ourselves to avoid uncertainty. They sneak in when we’re tired, when we’re rushed, when we’re scared to admit we don’t know. They feel like shortcuts. But in reality, they’re one of the biggest leaks in most investors’ edge.

You assume a stock is cheap because it’s down 40%.
You assume the Fed will cut because they “have to.”
You assume someone else knows more because they’re louder or on CNBC.

This isn’t conviction. It’s fear wearing the mask of insight.

Ruiz said we make assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions. That shows up constantly in markets. Instead of checking the footnotes, we skim the headline. Instead of building the bear case, we anchor to our entry. Instead of confirming the setup, we assume “it’ll bounce.”

The most dangerous assumptions are the ones we don’t even realize we’re making. That’s where overconfidence breeds fragility.

The fix? Curiosity.
Ask the question you’re afraid to ask.
“What am I treating as fact that’s actually a guess?”
“What would make this trade invalid?”
“Have I done the work, or am I filling in gaps with bias?”

Assumptions thrive in silence. Say them out loud and most fall apart.

If you want to be less wrong in markets, be more willing to admit what you don’t know.
Because the strongest edge isn’t certainty. It’s the courage to keep asking better questions.

Always Do Your Best

“Your best is going to change from moment to moment… but under any circumstance, simply do your best.”

This one sounds gentle. It’s not. It’s discipline at its rawest.

Ruiz wasn’t talking about hustle culture. He was talking about peace. The kind of peace that comes when you’ve done what you could with what you had, without cutting corners or hiding from the work.

Most investors don’t lose because they’re reckless. They lose because they get casual or lazy.

You skip prep because nothing’s moving.
You ignore your checklist because you think you’ve got it.
You skim the 10-K because the stock is already up.
You skip the review because the trade happened to work.

Edge doesn’t vanish in a single trade. It wears away, one lazy moment at a time.

Doing your best doesn’t mean being brilliant every day. It means refusing to be careless. It means sticking to your process when it feels pointless. It means keeping your tools sharp so you’re ready when your moment comes.

Your best is:
Logging the trade, even if it was small.
Reviewing the loss, especially if it hurt.
Running your screens, even when you don’t feel like it.
Respecting the craft, no matter the conditions.

Your best is not the ceiling. It’s the floor. It’s the standard you hold yourself to when nobody’s watching. And the higher that floor gets, the more consistent everything else becomes.

If you want to last in this game, forget chasing highs. Build the kind of process that never drops too low. That’s what real edge looks like.

Why does any of this matter?

Because long-term performance doesn’t come from luck or headlines. It comes from how well you hold yourself together when it matters most.

The best investors aren’t just idea machines. They’re unshakable. They manage pressure, not just capital. And they stay in the fight long after others drift. Mindset trumps all friend.

The Four Agreements won’t pick stocks for you. But they will strip away the noise, the self-sabotage, the mental clutter that kills compounding.

That’s where real alpha lives. Not in the trade. In the operator. In between your ears.

So speak with precision. Don’t take the market’s mood as a personal insult. Question every assumption. And do your best, every day, especially when it’s hard.

You don’t need to chase greatness when you’re already moving like someone who owns it.

And that’s the difference.

That’s the edge.

That’s how you win. That is how we win.

The best is ahead,

Victaurs