Daron Larson: Don’t Try to be Mindful

An excellent presentation about meditation and mindfulness practices. Many traders who have problems in developing consistency in trading can often trace the source of their difficulties from their messy thought processes. When these traders are being told to practice meditation through breathing exercises and awareness practices, they often give up or slack on the training because they do not see immediate results in their trading performances. Well, what they do not understand, and cannot understand, is that it takes time to retrain their minds.

In short, the worse shape your ability to focus your attention to only the factual information presented to you at the moment, the more time it takes to rewire your brain to get to the required state of mind to function properly in trading. Here is the catch – it is exactly those who needed the reprogrammable of their minds the most, are the ones who feel the most uneasy to press on  with their awareness practice.

From my experience coaching professional traders, everyone has a different appetite in terms of mindfulness training. Thanks to my classic martial art training, I have learned many different ways to train awareness and tame our thoughts. Yet, most of the time, only a subset of these techniques are suitable for a particular person. Hence, it is important for traders who want to improve their trading performances not giving up on meditation. It takes time to train your mind, just like physical training, as explained in the video.

Jon Kabat-Zinn: How to Feel Comfortable in Your Own Skin

A good summary on the reasons for which we should learn mindfulness practice. Being able to put yourself just a tiny step away from your emotions, you can do much better mentally. For traders, it is one of the best tools to improve our trading performance. As you transform into a more mindful person, you put your reactionary emotions caused by sensory stimulations coming from trading in check. This helps you to focus more on the process of executing your trading plan itself, not the outcome of individual trades.