Yesterday we looked at how taking control of your emotions is essential to success in trading. Rising above the base emotions of fear and greed, and instead, making trading decisions based on strategy and logic, is the only way to have consistent success in the markets.

As I hinted in the previous post, this isn’t something we do naturally, but it can be learnt.

Actually, “learnt” might not be the right word. What we’re really talking about is training our mind.

A MENTAL GYM

If we want to take control of our mind, so that we can more easily make decisions based on logic. then we need to give ourselves a mental workout.

When you want to train and hone your body, you go to the gym and do exercise. The same goes for the mind. With the right training and exercises, it’s possible to hone your mental abilities, and sharpen your mind.

Of course, these aren’t physical exercises you do in a gym, instead they are mental exercises you do in your head.

So what kind of exercises are we talking about here? Should we all be doing Brain Training on Nindentos? Well, not quite. Those kind of mental gymnastics are fine for improving the logical side of the brain, but we’re talking about getting the logical side and the emotional side to work better together. We want to calm that battle that is forever being waged in our heads. If we can get both sides of our brains working in harmony, then we’re really getting somewhere.

What kind of exercise can do that? Meditation!

BEAR WITH ME!

Ok, I probably just lost about 90% of the people reading this when I said that. But bear with me, because believe me, this is absolutely one of the biggest secrets to my success as a trader.

MR SPOCK

I first learnt this from one of my personal trading mentors. I used to watch in awe as he would sit there and calmly hit the buy and sell buttons, and take the losses with the same lack of emotion as he took the biggest profits you can imagine. Nothing phased him, ever. Imagine Mr Spock from Star Trek day trading, and you have some idea of what this guy was like.

The trader, I’ll call him Mr P because he doesn’t like publicity, was quite open about his meditation. In fact, he used to meditate for one hour a day, every day, before the markets opened. He swore blind that it was the reason he was so profitable.

I wasn’t convinced, but I figured that in the quest for profitability, anything was worth a try.

ANOTHER WAY

Learning meditation is in itself, fairly easy. But getting good at it, as I discovered, takes a lot of time and practice. And getting into a habit (which is absolutely key to making it work), takes discipline.

And herein lies the problem - we’ve already established that a lack of discipline is one of the things we need meditation to help us overcome! It’s a catch-22…

Much like we need structure to succeed in trading, so too can a structured approach help in meditation. I’m naturally a very lazy person, so anything that gives me structure, and makes something easy to do, is a godsend for me. Some time ago I was lucky enough to be introduced to a private system for structured meditation. Because I wasn’t required to think about it, or put in any effort, it suited me down to the ground!

And that’s what really turned round my trading. This structured approach to meditation gave me a way to take control of my own head. It calmed the battle between emotion and logic. I don’t claim to know exactly how it works, but it really does. When I finish my daily meditation, it feels like when you come out of a wonderful deep relaxing sleep. My head is crystal clear, my thoughts are laser sharp and focussed, and my emotions are completely under my control.

When I sit down to trade, it’s almost like I’m running on auto-pilot. I know my strategy inside out, and so I calmly click those buy and sell buttons when the chart tells me to. Sometimes, after a particularly deep meditation, I feel almost like I’m someone else, watching me trade!

HEAD STUFF - SORTED

Now here’s the reason I have chosen to share this insight with you at this time. The private structured program I used, has never been publicly available, it was only ever possible to get it via personal introduction. All that is changing next week.

I’ll tell you more about the program tomorrow, but first let me say something really important. Obviously I’m going to recommend you get this program when it’s released, I mean, it turned me from a so-so trader into a highly profitable one. But even if you decide to completely ignore me, please do think about what I’ve said about meditation and “head stuff”.

Getting my head in the right place was absolutely crucial to my success, and I’ve never talked about that openly before because most people aren’t ready to hear that meditation is a key to successful trading. Charts and stuff are so much more interesting, right? So feel free to ignore my email tomorrow, when I’ll tell you more about the program I use. But please do think about the advice I’ve shared thus far. There are many many methods for meditating and “head stuff”, and I believe that trying any of them can only make you a better trader.