Trading is arguably one of the most mentally challenging and stressful professions around. All responsibility is upon you as the sole manager of your trading account, which means you are personally responsible for all losses. With losses & hardship being a common occurrence in trading the mental toll can rack up fast. Meditation is designed to provide mental well-being, ease stress and bring a new level of mental clarity – PERFECT for the trading world.
Meditation can & will have many benefits for forex/stock/financial traders who decide to utilise it. The benefits include eased stress, slower mental ageing & an underlying sense of calm behind your actions in the market, win or lose.
1 – Meditation Eases Stress & Improves Mental Health
Studies suggest that even a few minutes of meditation per day can greatly reduce anxiety levels & help to reduce stress significantly. When we encounter stress or anger, hormones are released into the body that can cause thoughts to be impaired & lead to irrational decision making; In the world of trading irrational decision making is a sure path to destruction. With just a few minutes of meditation per day you can greatly reduce anxiety & stress levels and better your emotional control while in the field.
When you begin to meditate you will see the strengths, and with consistency you will find improvement within your trading and within your wider life.
2 – Meditation Improves & Maintains the Physical Brain
Scientific studies suggest that meditation improves the connections between different areas of the brain. Stronger brain connections means information is relayed faster, improving your awareness & your reactions. Meditation also helps to reduce the loss of ‘grey matter’, grey matter is involved in muscle control & sensory perception including seeing, hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making, and self-control. Meditation literally rewires your brain and allows for longer & healthier brain function; something essential to your trading career & quality/longevity of your life.
Harvard uni studies show that meditation increases the levels of grey matter in the hippocampus – an area of the brain responsible for managing awareness & passion, and decreases grey matter density in the amygdala, an area of the mind responsible for anxiety & stress, in turn cutting down stress levels. It’s also noted that meditation thickens the cerebral cortex, the most important part of the brain for managing awareness & attention. Your brain can literally be rewired & reshaped by the power of meditation.
A stronger more perceptive brain will work wonders for your trading, if you really want to take things to the next level, start practising meditation.
3 – Meditation Increases Alpha Brainwave Activity
There are five different types of brainwave activity – Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma. We will go more deeply into these in later posts. Alpha brainwave activity is the leading wave activity for aiding mental healing, coordination, learning, alertness & calmness so an increase in alpha wave activity is highly productive for traders who need to be in control of all of these things.
Alpha waves reflect the resting state of the mind, and so by meditating we aid our brains into reaching alpha wave activity levels & help to develop our learning, alertness, coordination and calmness; valuable traits for any financial trader.
Improve your Trading
These are just a few ways in which meditation can & will help you to grow as a trader & as a person.
Ultimately it is you who is responsible for your success or failure in the trading world. For longevity, consistency & success we must remain masters of our own minds always. Meditation is one of the strongest ways of achieving natural mental growth & I highly recommend it for everyone.
Early into the week I will be sharing with you an easy & time efficient meditation practise that makes for a perfect transition into this new world for those who have never used the practises before. This will be the first of many developments on this topic.
Personal Mastery = Total Mastery