How can traders reduce their level of performance anxiety? and Month PNL

 

Putting this blog with another last month PNL - not been able to trade much but tried to do whenever possible, the Personal Training groups size also got reduced and batches got shut down, but overall being a green month at the net which came with lots of learnings below are some I have put. 

I've never seen a trader succeed whose explicit or implicit goal was to not lose. The trader who trades to not lose is like the person who lives to avoid death: both become spiritual hypochondriacs.

 How can traders reduce their level of performance anxiety? Here are a few strategies that I have found to be effective:

1. Focus on process goals when thinking about trading, rather than profits/losses – Traders like to set goals for themselves, yet often as not, monetary goals end up creating unnecessary pressures. More effective goals are ones that focus on the process of trading, such as limiting losses to two ticks if you’re a scalper or holding trades until a trailing stop is hit. A nice mindset is, “If I just trade the right way, the profits will come.” This takes much of the pressure off the performance. 
2. Tackle risk incrementally - Risk places a psychological magnifying glass on situations and greatly increases the opportunities for performance pressure. A foul shot in the first minutes of a basketball game is the same foul shot in the final seconds of a tied contest, but there is a huge psychological difference. Traders who try to radically increase their size quickly find that the trade that worked out with 1 contract may not work with 10, because of pressures to (too) quickly limit losses or take profits. A gradual ramping up of size is far more effective than an impulsive leap for which one is emotionally unprepared. That's why people who trade in thousands arent ready for lakhs and the same for crores. Hence we handle HNI or BIG CAPITAL ACCOUNTS FOR THE SAME AND TRY TO PROVIDE THE BEST WE CAN 
3. Step away from the screen - The self-talk during periods of performance anxiety actually interferes with the accurate processing of market data, because the part of the brain responsible for perceiving and acting upon market patterns is not being activated. It is far better to step away from the screen and refocus on what the market is giving you than to act blindly on one’s fears and compound an already difficult situation. 
4. Use mental rehearsals to make threatening situations familiar - This is perhaps the single most effective technique I have found for reducing and eliminating performance fears. By using guided imagery to repeatedly face-threatening situations and mentally rehearse how one would like to respond, one can eliminate much of the stress when those situations actually occur. The goal is to so often face the performance fears in your mind that the coping response becomes automatic, like a habit pattern. 
5. Anchor mental rehearsals to distinctive mind states. This is one of the best strategies covered here  By learning to place oneself in a state of unusual calm and focus, and then by repeatedly rehearsing coping strategies for threatening situations, a trader can create a link between the mental state and the coping response. (also v useful in life ) When there is a stressful performance situation, all the trader needs to do is invoke the rehearsed mental state and the coping behaviors that have been overlearned will come to the fore. For instance, if you continually mentally rehearse a strategy for holding onto winning trades while sustaining a calm focus, recreating the calm focus during the next winning trade will make it easier to summon the self-talk and behavior associated with holding the position. 
6. Perform a mental checklist before trading. Eliminating perfectionistic expectations at the start of the trading day can go a long way toward reducing performance pressures. Any time the word “should” enters one’s thinking about trading, it’s time to step back. “Shoulds” include internal demands to make a certain amount of money, to trade with a particular frequency, to make back the money that has been lost, to not leave money on the table, etc. Because performance anxiety is often fueled by excessive self-demands, setting and affirming reasonable trading goals through the trading day can go a long way toward reducing performance pressures. 
7. Get a life. - When something becomes all-important, the pressures that accompany performance increase exponentially. Traders who trade for a living and who have little else going on in their lives are especially vulnerable to performance anxiety.(this line is not for beginners ) If trading is your whole world and trading isn’t working,(start learning - message me to make your mentor 9773770675 ) it’s going to feel like your world is collapsing. By placing one’s self-esteem eggs in many baskets, traders can ensure that the inevitable drawdowns and cold periods will not disrupt their self-confidence.  

I cannot emphasize strongly enough: Most traders who are convinced that they have deeply-rooted psychological problems or addictive trading patterns are actually caught in a vicious cycle of perfectionistic self-demands, increasing performance pressure, mounting anxiety disrupted performance and renewed self-demands to compensate for the failure. After a while, traders caught in such a cycle begin to doubt whether they will ever succeed. By addressing their problems at the source—the expectations that generate performance pressure—traders can often turn themselves around in a surprisingly short period of time. COME LETS  LEARN THIS HIGH-INCOME SKILL 

---- ACCOUNT HANDLING SERVICE FOR ACCOUNTS ABOVE 10 L - 20 CR ---DM TO KNOW MORE

How Some Other Traders Have Tried to Control Unwanted Thoughts and Feelings