Boost your mental stamina
I came across an interesting article in one of my wife’s magazines. It’s from the April 2006 edition of She, and the article is titled ‘Boost your stamina’. It looks at ways to boost your physical endurance, as it has the additional benefits of helping you heal faster, sharpening your mental focus and reduces your stress levels. The part that caught my eye was one of the recommendations on how to improve your mental staying power:
Meditate
It can help improve brain stamina, researchers have found. An imaging study at Massachusetts General Hospital showed that particular areas of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain, were thicker in those who were experienced meditation practitioners, suggesting it worked harder, for longer. “Our results suggest that meditation can produce experience-based structural alterations in the brain”, says Dr. Sara Lazar, of the hospital’s psychiatric neuro-imaging research program.
One more good reason why it helps to meditate if you are a dedicated trader.
Yesterday I had two trades close out. One was a simple bread and butter type trade that I had opened on Wednesday evening. The other was the closing out of my oldest trade, from way back in early September. Of course, with negative interest rollover on EUR-USD long positions and the extended length of time this trade was open meant I barely made any profit on it, but profit there was.
This puts me all square in advance of the non-farm payroll data report that will be released at 8:30am EST this morning.
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Comment from ewmeadows
Time 16 November, 2007 at 5:12 am
Colin,
I just want to add to this “mental stamina” post, that, not only can meditative techniques, { such as “visualization” (i.e. cybernetics) and/or just doing some simple “clear your mind” exercises, such as herbert benson’s version of TM (transcendental meditation …. which can be found at http://www.ucop.edu/humres/eap/relaxationrespone.html (what’’s cool about this technique, is, that, in scientific and controlled studies, it produced the same benefits as the famous TM (transcendental meditation) technique, only, you don’t have to join a cult and pay out the nose, and go along with all of the “religious” baggage the TM technique carries with it.
or, just less “esoteric” things, like “sauna rounds” , which involve sitting in a far infrared sauna (or just something more accessible) ……… or, just getting out of the house and WALKING, or whatever, and/or simple yoga postures, chi kung, or martial arts forms, can also help to “center” and “focus” us.
I’ve found that, in working with these kinds of disciplines for over 40 years, that a combination of eating healthy (lighter, for the most part, not so much flesh food and dairy products) PLUS doing the “cleansing” things, like the sauna rounds, and the exercise, and the martial arts forms, and the chi kung, and the yoga, and the meditation exercises, together, produce a “CENTERNESS” that is very close to the more relaxed feeling that one might have when trading a demo account.
I agree, totally, that it is the “tension” and the “anxiety” that are generated when a person puts their hard earned CASH on the line that really makes it difficult to THINK clearly, and so, these time honored means of RELAXING, and FOCUSING one’s energies, bodily, emotionally, and mentally, can really make a difference in one’s ability to trade in a much more RELAXED way.