Trading Performance stress

When you start trading, there is stress for fear to lose money. however, we can learn to manage the stress by control our breath. Breathing is a unique hybrid to the brain and body. It is simultaneously autonomic and volitional. Due to its autonomic character, you are able to breathe without thinking about it. When you go to sleep, your breathing will go on about its business without your slightest concern. Due to its volitional nature, you can manage how you breathe when in an awakened state. It is this aspect, managing how you breathe, that is vital to emotional regulation.

Breathing is like air supply to a fire. Just as a blacksmith will fan a fire with his bellows to produce a hotter fire, your type of breathing will either fan the arousal of an emotional fire or quell the fire.When the emotions of fear and anger are triggered, air supply to the brain is cut off. Consequently one’s capacity to think is shut off. Both of these emotions deal with the fight or flight motivation grounded in primitive survival impulses. Biologically you are predisposed to react rather than think. All the body’s energy is rerouted into the big muscles and is preparing you to fight or to flee. Thinking is not important at this time.

Once breathing becomes a skill, it can be used like a rheostat for your heart rate. There is a reciprocal relationship between the rate at which you breathe and the rate at which the heart pumps. When breathing with long, deep breaths you produce a mood of calmness where the heart is at rest and the heart rate is slowed down. However if you speed breathing up (or stop breathing), you also speed up the heart rate. As the heart begins to beat harder and faster, an alarm is triggered in the survival brain and it triggers to fight or flight. An emotional hijacking (and a bad trade) is in progress. This, in combination with your cutting off your air supply to the brain, leads the primitive survival brain to overwhelm the thinking brain and become a runaway freight train. This is not conducive to successful trading.

your trading acocunt is a good refect of your emotion state. the more consistent your profit making, the more stable is your emotion state. we cant avoid the stress when trading but we can manage it.