Doing the Right thing isn’t Always Easy

Doing the right thing isn’t always easy.  As I take the time to prepare a salad, shaving and chopping beets. Then cutting the carrots and washing the lettuce.  A canned Amy’s organic soup stares me in the face. In 5 minutes I could be eating, but I have another 10 minutes of prep to go…

When we trade the market, we are always in preparation, searching, no hunting for that one good trade.  When we find it, we eat and are ideally rewarded.  The last week, however, there has been a famine. With the market eagerly anticipating the fed announcement on Wednesday markets went sideways an extremely difficult market to trade for those who use the trend to trade.  What is the right thing to do?

For me, sit & prepare.  My coach John over at John Fitzpatrick Coach summarized a passage from the famous Bhagavad-Gita, “That within inaction is action.”

Within Inaction is Action.

Every trader is different and trades differently. This week for me was a lesson is patience discipline and knowing when to focus energy elsewhere when the fruit is too high to pick.

Breaking your negative mindset

It happens to all traders.  9:30 you hear that bell ring, with your plan in hand, you are ready to trade.  9:45 you put on your first trade: Stopped out. 9:51 you put on the second trade: Stopped out. You know where this is going…

All the statistics in the world wouldn’t prove to your feelings that the next trade is going to be different.  Two things are happening here 1) Unconcious negative priming 2) Fixated mindset.

These thoughts can range from “This next trade just isn’t gonna work I can feel it.” To “f@&k this! I’m a horrible trader, nothing I ever do is right.”  How do you break this mind set?  Move the body, but why?

“How do you break a negative mindset? Move the body!

In John Coates book The Hour between dog & wolf, he cites numerous studies supporting the idea that the endocrine system as a whole is meant to prepare the body for movement.  You are sitting there trading though!  Move the body! As the chemical cocktail permeates your system you are prepared to escape that tiger, fight that local villager, or keep your rank as Alpha Male.  But you’re still sitting there.  Get up!  There is support that exercise does more than just burn calories (more on this in a later blog & how it may effect trading)

Use the endorphins that flood this biomechanical machine to move. Go for a walk, go hit the heavy bag, do short sprints, squats, burpees, or push ups!  Anything that will let those chemicals be used in the way they were supposed to.