Forex Trader Samuel Leach on Why Feeling Uncomfortable is the Answer

Samuel Leach is the director and founder of Samuel & Co. Trading and the chief-executive-officer of Yield Coin. During his TEDx talk at the University of Hertfordshire, Leach advocated the embrace feeling uncomfortable. Instead of feeling discouraged in light of irritation, stress, and nerves, he uses these emotions as a chance to grow his brand and his business. He discusses experiences with his family and his colleagues to frame himself as a living testament to the power of embracing discomfort.

Why Be More Like a Lobster?

In 2018, Samuel Leach led a TEDx talk at his alma mater, the University of Hertfordshire. He began his address with a definition of the word uncomfortable. While all humans experience discomfort, Leach asked the audience why it’s taboo to discuss. His most profound experience with discomfort came at a young age. His father and his brothers moved into a single bedroom into a house in a low-income neighborhood. To make matters worse, they only had enough money to rent a single room in an entire home. There was one bed for all four of them in a 12 by 8-foot space. Despite his discomfort, these tough times encouraged him to bloom.

Leach also describes a lobster analogy described by Abraham Twerski to draw a parallel from his uncomfortable experiences. Lobsters become stressed and “irritable to the point where it has to do something.” That something involves shedding its “hard rigid shell before it grows its new shell and goes back out into the ocean.” He then challenges the audience to use this analogy in the context of their everyday lives. “When we feel irritable, when we feel stressed, when we feel nervous, when we feel uncomfortable, we feel there’s something wrong with us, and we try to suppress that feeling...to get rid of that feeling.” Leach challenges the audience to stop attaching negative emotions to irritation, stress, nerves, and discomfort. It does not mean that something is wrong, but rather, that there’s an opportunity to realize growth.

How to Implement Fear Setting

Leach’s TEDx talk also elaborates on Tim Ferris’s Fear Setting theory. He introduces Fear Setting as a guide on how to “put yourself out there to find the worst-case scenario” to overcome anxiety. When people go out in the world to achieve something, Leach acknowledges that people become too caught up with the “what-ifs?” surrounding our potential failure and unflattering appearance. Alternatively, by responding to those what-ifs, Leach suggests that the audience can make their goals more attainable and less intimidating.

When Leach left his job in finance to start his own business, Samuel & Co. Trading, he worried about losing his financial security. In responding to his “what-if? surrounding this financial risk, Leach made sure to have the right earnings before he left and select the right staff and structure for the business. Additionally, to “repair” his train of thought, he made sure to leave his bank employer on an excellent note to return to his job if his entrepreneurship endeavor did not work out. Yet with dismantling one “what-if” came the emergence of another. As Leach’s business grew to over sixty staff, he developed concern about losing his personnel’s control. He also feared that he would lose his reputation by “setting off and going into a new venture” outside Samuel & Co. That venture included creating a cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency, a high-risk market, is “highly volatile, it’s on the media every single day, it’s a topic that is discussed both for its positives in technology and negatives in its risk.”

Changing the interpretation of the word fear demonstrates how Leach owes his success to embracing discomfort. Balancing his new cryptocurrency endeavor, in addition to expanding his first entrepreneurial project, Samuel & Co. Trading began to feel uncomfortable. He asked himself, “how can I prevent failure when I’m creating a cryptocurrency?” Instead of becoming overly concerned with the unknown, Leach focused on the factors he could control. He made sure that he had the right team in place for the new project. That mindset allows him to think of Fear Setting more as Risk Setting. There is, in his opinion, a higher cost of inaction. Failing to believe in yourself because of your fears is detrimental. Leach explained that if he did not believe in himself, he would not have changed as many lives through his company or have made a career out of his passions.

About Samuel Leach

Samuel Leach is a self-made millionaire and entrepreneur. His foreign exchange trading career and resulting business began during his education at the University of Hertfordshire. With a student loan of 2,000 Great British Pounds (GBP), Leach committed to teaching himself how to trade foreign currencies. This self-education culminated in over a year and half of working twelve to sixteen hour days. The result was a 170,000 GBP profit.

Leach’s first business, Samuel & Co., launched in 2012 as a 50-50 profit-sharing arrangement for traders. That organization has since expanded to include training programs stretching from England to Madrid. His programs appeal to aspiring traders through their holistic teaching methods and offer of initial capital. In addition to the foreign exchange markets, Leach is also involved in cryptocurrency. In 2018, Leach launched Yield Owl, the world’s first multi-backed cryptocurrency token and platform. The platform seeks to bring traders and investors together to create stronger relationships within the industry.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes