Stress. Just the word fills us with all sorts of emotions: dread, guilt, anxiety and more, but what exactly is stress? Stress is usually the bucket word we use to describe events in our lives we cannot quite control but have to manage in some way, be it expected or unexpected. Stress is also a source for much of our illnesses, being blamed for everything from heart…

As we approach a new beginning it is so important to have the right mindset. It is so easy to get into damaging thinking and become our own worst enemies. What do I mean by this? I mean that our inner dialog is the most important conversation we have every day. Think about it. Every moment of us being awake we are in a conversation with ourselves. The nature of that conversation though, is up to you. Look back at how you speak to yourself in a day, are you…

As the number of totally vaccinated adults continues to grow, we are entering a phase where we can begin to feel hopeful about life returning to normal. Soon, we can enjoy vacations to far off lands, visit with loved ones and hang out with strangers sans masks. All of these things are happy things for sure but before we get lost in the fervor of returning to normal life, we should ask…

As we in America and many other countries move towards complete reopening and getting closer to herd immunity there is an elephant in the room. The elephant is the happiness we are feeling as we are starting to get some normal things back. Things we used to take for granted like hugs or interactions with strangers, travel and exploring the world have all but been…

As we continue to explore mindset, this session we have to take time to look at our own internal dialog. You may think that your internal dialog doesn't matter, how can we be so gullible as to believe things we are thinking in moments of extreme emotions? But self talk can be incredibly destructive. If we are talking ourselves down all day it will have an impact not just on how we feel but how we behave to others. Don't believe me? Think about the last time you got in a fight with a loved one…

After you told yourself your self narrative and analyzed it, you should have a pretty good idea on where you stand in your mindset department. Chances are, you are looking to improve your mindset and self narrative, or you wouldn't be going further in these articles, so the next stop is to decide what type of narrative you want to have. Of course we can not change our pasts. History and what actually happened to us are just truths, but how we use these events to create are narratives we can alter and help create for ourselves a more positive life story and hence…

In our final thoughts on trader wellness this month I would like to take some time to talk about intention setting. Intention setting can be a little bit different from goal setting, although both are coming from the same vein. In intention setting we are learning what we want for our future but leaving it open for how to get there. For example we know that pretty much all of us would like to be happy, but what does happiness mean and look like? Each of us can have pretty different ideas…

One of the largest issues I personally struggle with in my daily life is not being present. Part of it is what I believe to be a coping mechanism from years of lots of long travel. Being able to drift off into my mind helps make the amount I travel much easier to cope with, but the other effects are not as great. Because I have the tendency to let my mind wander when I am doing tasks that do not require my attention, like driving, cooking, cleaning etc, I often find myself doing…

As we go through our month-long dive into trading wellness, I felt a need to talk about anxiety surrounding trading. We all experience it in one form or another, but I find we don't always realize the root of the anxiety. While we talk a lot about stress and conflict in our trading lives, we don't often talk about anxiety. Anxiety in and of itself is a much larger condition then what we will focus on today, instead we will focus mainly on trading anxiety. What is trading anxiety? It is when…

Mindset is for not just your mental health but your outlook and general happiness in life. But the improvement of our mindset is not something that is going to happen overnight. It takes conscious effort and daily practice to break old habits and form new ones. Like any goal, success isn't going to happen overnight nor is it something that you win like a trophy and never have to…