How Well Being Affects Trader Performance

Our well being is a result of our baseline happiness or general satisfaction with our life as it is. If we feel a sort of discontent or ill will towards our current situation, then it can be said that our baseline well being will be lower than someone who approaches life with empowering beliefs and a positive mindset. If overall we are unsatisfied with the situation life has handed us, then this is likely to be reflected in our trading, and will manifest itself in forcing trades, grasping at straws just to give us the illusion that we have some control over the far from ideal present circumstances. Obviously on an individual level it is much deeper than this, and the underlying cause for the manifestation of poor trading could be a number of different things beneath the surface. The point is this; you cannot trade at your best if you are not living properly. How can you define living properly? Well let’s start with doing the things you know you are supposed to do, and refraining from the actives in which overall well being will be decreased. Some destructive behavior or thought patterns may bring temporary satisfaction if you allow yourself to indulge in them, but you and I both know how giving into those destructive behaviors end. They end in a wide range of negative emotions which leave us feeling worse than we did before, therefore decreasing our overall well being. It is the aim of the aspiring trader to forgo destructive tendencies and double down on the activities that promote physical and mental health. What we are really aiming for though, is the discovery of confluence across multiple domains that can be integrated into your routine to make you a better person, and therefore a better trader.