It is incredibly important to stay calm when you are watching the markets. If your thoughts are arguing with each other and you have multiple reasons to enter as well as multiple reasons not to enter you need to come to a decision.

Whenever I am in front of the charts and I feel like I am being indecisive I take a minute to calm my mind and this is how I do it.

When your mind is clustered it means there isn’t a focal point for it maintain a rhythm of thought and so, your mind thinks of multiple things which have nothing to do with each other. This causes anxiety and decision fatigue because cluster thoughts demand brain power and if it continues you will get overwhelmed and you will end up making bad decisions.

Whenever I feel that my mind is clustered I count from 1 to 30 and in my mind I try to focus on picturing the number to give my brain a focal point. Unfortunately counting is boring and so you may experience that after a few seconds your mind will wonder and as that happens you must identify the wondering and start over. What this method does, is it slows down your brain by giving it only one thing to focus on – that is why you must try to visualise it. This method potentially also slows down your brainwaves to a lower frequency since it is using less resources (by not trying to focus on too many things at once) to process information – counting takes no effort for the mind).

You must also understand that to stop racing thoughts you must actively slow down your thoughts, like you would slow your breathing after a sprint to decrease your heartrate. Once you have completed counting from 1 to 30 without interruption you must now count backwards from 30 to 1. This now forces your mind to think in a different way and in turn forces you to focus a little more on the task since counting backwards doesn’t come as easily to the mind, forcing it to focus in a more linear way.

I often find my decisions are more informed once I have forced my thinking to slow down. This method is remarkably simple but takes some practice and getting used to. I believe in this method because it literally forces your mind to slow down… if you count properly. Counting fast will only make your thoughts more erratic.

Stay focused on painting a picture of the number in your mind and ensure it is the only thought you are focusing on for the entire 30 seconds. A calm mind learns and operates far better than one that has already gotten frustrated with the market or one that has experienced multiple thoughts at any given moment. Your thoughts must be focused on a single task at hand and each following thought must compliment the previous one so that things may add up and make sense in order for you to make a decision.

Until next time, Happy Trading.

Dylan Peacock, Novice Trader