In This Episode
- Breathing techniques you can use to reduce stress
- Breath book
- How ice water can help you calm down
- The HeartMath device
How to Manage Your Stress While Trading
Trading can be stressful.
But if you learn to manage yours stress, you dramatically improve your odds of trading better.
Learn the tips and techniques that we use to lower our stress levels and focus on executing good trades.
Read the Transcript:
Hugh: Hi, Walter. Let's talk about some strategies for calming yourself down during trading. Maybe you had a bad day, got into a fight or something like that. What are some strategies that you use to calm yourself down?
Walter: Good one is breathing techniques. So one would be like you want to breathe in and out your nose. There's a new book about this called Breath. I don't know maybe we'll put in the show notes. This guy kind of went around the world and learned all this stuff about breathing which people said, “What? You're writing a book about breathing?”
Obviously these sorts of things have been handed out through the centuries especially out in the East. One way to do it is to breathe in. Close off one nostril; breathe in one side and then breathe out the other. Or, you can just breathe in like to a count of six and then breathe out to a count of six.
If you're really small and younger maybe a count of five or four but not if you're a normal adult. The reason why I say it is because I do it with my kids and we don't count to six because they can't go that far. Their lungs are too small. You know if you're a small person, right? So that's another thing or you can just simply, I like to lie down.
I know some people don't because they fall asleep. We can lie down and do the sort of guided imagery thing. Where every breath you take, what you do is you feel the relaxation kind of moves further through your body. Starts up in your head goes down through your neck, your shoulders, your body, your abdomen, all the way down to your toes.
So after two minutes you've got to the point where that breath like the first breath, the first exhale, it's like here. Second exhale is like here you know as you go, you kind of just let it go. So that's more of a sort of like a guided imagery or guided meditation sort of thing that you can do.
Those are the probably the easiest ones like if you breathe in and out your nose and you do it slowly enough, you will reduce your blood pressure. There's all kinds of things that you can do. If you're like in a full panic attack, the tips I got from that were because I used to get these for a really short period of time when I was going to defend my dissertation in Psychology.
I was freaking out because I tried to defend it and they filmed me and so then I was like, “Well I hope they don't film me the second time. What are they going to do?” So I was really freaking out and I learned to put your face in ice water. So if you're super like really kind of heart palpitation I mean, this is not just normal you know you're stressed out.
I'm talking about really full on. Put your head into ice water or bear down and squeeze like you're doing a poo, that's the other one. Those two are totally, it's like a nerve thing. They both will slow down your heart. So that's just extreme but otherwise, I would go with the relaxation, you know visualization of your body. Relaxing or the breathing thing can work too. What about you? Do you have any tips on that?
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Hugh: Yeah. I mean, I do the breathing thing too but I also use this device from HeartMath and they measure your heart-brain-heart coherence. So that's a visual way at least you can see on the app. How coherent you are right now and they usually recommend that you breathe like I think five times.
I mean, breathe out for five counts, in for five counts and that really slows things down. It increases your heart rate variability and then once that graph is green then you know that you're kind of in a good place to start trading.
Walter: Okay, can I ask you a question? When you do this, are you sitting up or lying down or what position are you when you're using this?
Hugh: Just sitting down in my chair.
Walter: Okay and so when you're doing it, are you looking at the app? Is it like a biofeedback kind of thing. Where you're looking at the app or is it different?
Hugh: I personally just do five minutes and I don't look at the screen because when I look at the screen, it freaks me out and my graph goes back down again.
Walter: Yeah, that's what I would be worried about like that was my concern; that's why I asked that. So you kind of like check in with the app. It's not like you're just, “Yeah, I could see where that would be.” For me that would be definitely like for you, the same; that would be counterproductive.
That's the thing like I love those apps. I'm always concerned about you know is my attention going to be on the app like the screen or is it going to be more on what I’m working on? That's the only thing I always wonder about those but that's a great way to do it, really. You just check in like every three, five minutes just check and see where you're at.
Hugh: Yeah, whatever works for you.
Walter: And the one that you turn me on to the, it has the headphones. You plug in your headphones and then what was it? The birds start chirping and stuff?
Hugh: Yeah, the Muse headband.
Walter: Right, the Muse headband. That one's cool because you don't actually have to look at it. It just tells you with the audio, that's why I like that one. It'll tell you when you're slowing down. It'll tell you when you're in a lower brainwave or whatever. That's what I like about it.
Hugh: With those though I end up looking at the time so that kind of throws me off sometimes.
Walter: Yeah, that's true. Cool.
Hugh: All right. Thanks, Walter.
Walter: Thank you.
Hugh: All the information in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not trading or investment advice.
SHOW NOTES:
Breath by James Nestor
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