Practice meditation at the same time everyday to help instill the habit and routine, especially when beginning. It’s a perfect way to start your day before you do anything else. It can rejuvenate, align, invigorate and charge your system, infusing you with a sharpened sense of attention to what matters. It’s also a wonderful way to end the day to wind down, de-stress, realign, shed tension, calm the system, and generally defuse any negative energy that could disrupt a good night’s sleep. A mediation break at lunch is an excellent tool to maintain balance and focus for the day to weed out distractions and remain on purpose and on task. As you can see, any time might be the best time for you. Additionally, you may want to develop a two-a-day practice, once in the morning and once in the evening, as a powerful way to instill and maintain a sense of calm intention throughout the day and night. There is no set time interval to meditate but, generally speaking, 20 to 30 minutes is what many use. For beginners, I usually suggest that they start with 5 minutes and work their way into longer time frames until they are able to remain still and focused for 20 to 45 minutes.
Your trading requires the best you can give while activating and accessing all of your internal and external resources. Trading is tough and as you meditate, with consistency, you will develop greater capacity for patience, calm, sharpened focus and being less distracted by negative emotions. Diligent and consistent meditation will help you to reduce distorted judgment by building emotional strength and a level of detachment. Trading is almost exclusively a mental art. During your trading process you are preparing, analyzing, processing or executing a trade; all of which require mental and emotional tools. You’ve got to have mental and emotional tools in your tool belt, otherwise it’s like driving without a steering wheel; you will lose your way and crash and burn without them. Put the steering into your trading.
Over the years, the usefulness of meditation has been scientifically documented in hundreds of studies with regard to physiological, mental, emotional and behavioral benefits. Some of those benefits include:
- Sharpening attention
- Lowering heart rate
- Lowering stress levels
- Easing anxiety
- Increasing patience
- Inducing calm
- Reducing susceptibility to fear and greed.
With consistency, this powerful practice supports the entire system of mind/body and spirit.
