Sitting at your computer, ready to trade, can be a highly charged, emotional event for a noob. Especially in the beginning. You have high expectations from yourself to make money. Everybody else is creaming the profits, why can’t you?!
Well, have you fine-tuned your strategy by paper trading (pretend trading)? Chances are when you gawk at a pump sky-rocketing, your eyes’ popping out your skull, you won’t be able to resist. But the market will.
The pump will turn into dump in seconds. By the time the market has accepted your trade, price has plummeted off your monitor, settling in the dust under your flip-flops. You will more likely enter another trade just as hasty to recoup your losses. And it will end the same way.
The beauty in trading is the presence of your psyche needed.
Study your technical analysis. Absorb your mind in understanding the market mechanisms and trends. Learn to filter out the noise of hype, narrative control by mainstream media. The markets have absorbed it before you read it.
Don’t be reactionary!
Know yourself!
You know what your bad habits are. The little voice in your head has been telling you for ages. Do something about it. Start a process to take responsibility for the things you know you need to change.
Meditate.
The beauty in meditation is being a witness to all the krap in your mind without being absorbed in it. Observe the beliefs holding you back; the destructive thoughts that disrupt your happy flow. What you learn about yourself will be monumental!
You will notice that certain thoughts keep recurring. These thoughts are going to be your truth. Your personal story that dictates your life through their vibration in the world around you. You will attract the story you are telling yourself. Meditation is the key to identifying those thoughts.
Yes, so the yogi goal of meditation is the Stillness that lies beyond your thinking. Understand the true reality of your Being is this Presence, not the thinking. The thinking is like the noise from mainstream media, it’s counter-productive to your living.
Hack those thoughts!
Observe what you learnt about money from your parents. You’ve probably inherited your attitude to money from them. “Money doesn’t grow on Trees”, “You have to work hard for a living.”, “You get what you deserve!” What is your inherited subconscious mantra leaked from your parents?!
Are you desperate? Do you throw money at the market even when you don’t have clear signals, or not all the conditions of your strategy are met? Do you feel money always moving away from you? Out of your wallet, out to your stop losses and liquidation points? Do you consider yourself part of the Unlucky?
Disassociate your self from the thoughts. Create a little distance. The thoughts are not you. You are the creator. So, use them to your benefit. They become your tools to write your own life story.
Bring your awareness back to your breath. Feel the air as it moves past your nostrils. Relax your face, neck and shoulders. Feel the tension draining down out your body. Breathe into your lower abdomen, allow the air to fill up into your chest, and as you exhale feel all the tension draining out your arms and down through your legs into the earth (that supports you unconditionally).
Your abdominal breath is the gateway to the autonomic nervous system (the processes you can’t control like blood pressure, sweat glands, viscera, digestion and elimination). Only breathing into your chest is going to activate a flight/fight response and exacerbate your stress levels. Spend 5 – 10 minutes every day observing your breath, introduce it into your getting ready to trade ritual.
Sit comfortably. Feet flat. Palms open. Shoulders relaxed. Breathe into your abdomen. Slow and consciously. Have you planned your trade (jotted it down in a journal)? Do you have a plan if the market doesn’t move to your advantage? Are all the conditions for your strategy met?
Be abundant. Focused. Masterful Human Being.
If the only thing you gain from trading is self-knowledge, it will be worth it.