Stock trading is a game that’s not for the faint-hearted. Whether you’re just getting started or have been in the trade for a lifetime, there’s always something new to learn. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that you won’t always make money. While some professionals may throw their weekly earnings around and make it seem like it’s something everyone can do and you’ll become a millionaire, the unfortunate reality is that’s just not true.
Trading stocks is a roller coaster of emotions. One minute you could make more money than you ever have and in the next you could lose it all. As stock trading becomes more and more available for the every day individual, one technique that wouldn’t have thought to be attributed to success is meditation.
Gain Your Advantage
Accessibility to trade stocks has skyrocketed over the past few years due to the development of trading apps. Apps like Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, Webull, and many more, have made it possible for untrained individuals to open their phones, look at the market, and make a few dollars here and there.
But for professionals, trading is an artform. It isn’t just looking at some numbers and making a quick trade to make a few dollars. That’s childsplay. Professional stock traders make calculated decisions that typically result in huge paydays for themselves, their firm, and their clients.
Trading demands results every day, and everyone wants to find their competitive advantage. How can one trader make more money than his/her counterpart? One of the more common answers now is mindful meditation.
Mindfulness is understanding and recognizing what’s happening around you to live in the moment. People typically brush this to the wayside as this takes too much time and is for the weakminded. But it’s much more than taking a deep breath to understand what’s happening around you and analyzing the situation. It’s a step of calculated measurements to respond rather than react. In stock trading, reactive actions are taken thousands of times per day. But it’s how you respond that can help you take your stock trading to the next level.
The people in our lives who we choose to associate with should provide positivity, empathy, and understanding, but that isn’t always the case. There will always be circumstances where misunderstandings, challenges, disagreements, and other dysfunctional elements arise.
When it comes to marriage in the United States, nearly 50% of all them end in divorce or separation and roughly 40% of all first marriages end in divorce. A bleak number that often doesn’t provide a lot of hope for people who are looking to take the next step. But rather than looking at the glass half full and thinking the odds are stacked against you, think about the positives that come from it and how you can strengthen what you already have.
Stop Focusing on the Negatives
Every relationship will have its ups and downs. We are all our own people and all have our own opinions and thoughts. Disagreements from time to time are normal, so stop looking at them as if the world is falling apart.
Don’t Just Hear, Listen
Just because you hear what the other person is saying doesn’t mean you’re listening to what’s being said. You can hear a siren in the background but you choose not to listen to it. Listen to your partner and understand them. Empathize with them. Be an active listener and you’ll find that both of you will be better off.
Be Open
Keeping emotions, thoughts, feelings bottled up never does anyone any good. Be open in your relationship and share how you feel. If your partner does something you don’t like, let them know. This will help both of you work through problems rather than suppressing your feelings and talking about them with other people.
Nobody is Always Right
Unfortunately, neither of you can always be right. Too many people would rather go down with the ship than admit that they were wrong. There is a time and a place for a discussion, but when neither one of you can come to an agreement, one needs to accept the other’s point of view and move on. Getting hung up on who’s right and who’s wrong never does anybody any favors.
Benefits of Meditation for Stock Trading
Studies have proven to show positive correlations between mindful meditation and stock trading. It’s a way to slow down thought processes and respond to situations differently to make a calculated decision that yields results, not further action. Traders who practice meditation find themselves making better trading decisions, not panic-selling, not overreacting to breaking news, and looking at information objectively, not subjectively.
Meditation for stock trading helps improve clarity and redirect your attention the matter at hand, not something that happened or something that could happen. It helps you stay present and improves clarity. When you can think clearly and calmly, you can make more sound decisions as you are no longer focusing on negative thoughts or emotions. This all leads to a more positive response, not reaction, to how you’ll make your stock trading decisions.
Decrease Negative and Depressing Thoughts
When stock trading, depression is far too common. Riding an emotional roller coaster day after day can be exhausting and take a physical and mental toll on your body. If the markets are less than favorable and you are losing money, negative thoughts unfortunately creep in and can put you in a state of depression.
Meditation helps decrease the number and frequency of negative thoughts that enter your mind. Thinking positive thoughts sounds all too easy, until negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence you day after day, week after week. Meditation will help reprogram and retrain your brain so you no longer see all the negatives in life, only when you allow your conscious mind to see them.
Reduce Stress and Anxiety
Stock trading is stressful! Constantly analyzing numbers. Having pressure from yourself to make money, your firm, your clients. All this weight gets heavy after a while and can become too much. Meditation helps mitigate these stressors and anxiety to create clarity and free thinking. It won’t make the bad things in life go away. Meditation is reprograming you to think positively and look at situations differently.
Be Present
Meditation is about being in the moment and providing yourself with clarity. With numbers flying everywhere and stress mounting, it’s easy to lost concentration and get distracted. Mindfulness will help you realign and refocus so you can be present to get the clarity you need. Life is full of distractions and when your mind is constantly having to depict between what is and isn’t a distraction, it becomes exhausting. Relax your mind, clear your thoughts, and become a calmer, more peaceful, more present individual.
How to Get Started
If asked, you could probably point out all the times when your approach to stock trading was emotional rather than rational. This is another example of focusing on the losses, not the wins you’ve had. If you’ve ever studied the great traders, the one constant element that is mentioned by them all is that they remain calm. Easier said than done.
When emotions engulf us, we experience what is known as ’emotional hijacking’. The more fear or greed you experience around your stock trading, the harder it is to think clearly. The part of your brain which thinks logically, the neo-cortex, is swamped by emotions and loses the ability to operate properly.
At Theta, our goal is to not only help you improve your stock trading habits and thought processing, but improve your overall self. Meditation does more than just improve one facet of your life. It’s something that can transform your entire self and well-being.
Our GMS (Guided Meditation and Suggestion) therapy will help you reprogram your thought processing by retraining your unconscious mind. GMS will help you approach stock trading more calmly and strategically which can help lead to better results. Learn more about Theta GMS today to take your stock trading to new heights.
