A 3-minute exercise to make you a smarter trader

You’ve probably had this feeling at some point … one minute you’re watching the perfect trade build up … about leap into action … then suddenly its like a switch has flipped … you’re stuck, unable to see the path of action clearly …

Or you’re already in a trade, and you’re looking at the charts, doubting whether you did the right thing … should you jump out of it quickly, before any damage is done … or should you trust your first decision …?

Why are these decisions so difficult?

Is it because trading is inherently too difficult? (If we really believed we weren’t up to it, then we definitely shouldn’t be risking our money.)

Is it because we don’t know our own trade criteria? (If that’s the case, then we really need to draw up our trade plan.)

Or are we just drowning in conflicting messages as they fire around our brain?

If it’s the latter, then you’re not alone.

According to research by Dr Frederic Luskin of Sanford University, a human being has around 60,000 thoughts per day, and 90 per cent of these are repetitive.

That’s a lot of noise to think through.

There’s been a lot of buzz in the media recently about ‘mindfulness’ – how finding ‘stillness’ through meditation and mindfulness exercises can help us to make better decisions. But here I want to show you a quick fix that you can start doing right now that will help you make better decisions.

Give yourself three minutes to do this. Make sure you won’t be disturbed – you can set a timer so you know when you’re done. You don’t need to do anything else – just stay seated where you are.

Now, imagine you’re watching a rolling news channel, with the newsfeed scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen. There’s a bit of news, then some white space … then more news … and so on.

Your thoughts are like that news – always going, always repeating themselves. Imagine your thoughts scrolling across the bottom of that TV screen. Now focus your attention on the white space between those thoughts. Let the thoughts scroll by – just keep your attention on the space between them.

Keep practicing this for 3 minutes a day. When you first start out, you may struggle to find the white space, but as you practise, you find that this white space gets wider … in time, you’ll see mostly space with fewer thoughts.

We tend to cram every spare space in our brains with our repetitive thoughts, but by giving our brains room to work, we can make better decisions, and ultimately achieve our goals.

Definitely worth a try …

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