Let’s talk about emotional control. There are few threads about it in my humble perception. It is interesting to discuss how different traders deal with the emotions. So i’ll start with myself.
Just for the record, i’ve learned the bad way, oh pain, painful pain. Gonna skip that part and talk about the actual events.
All emotions are bad when get uncontrolled, i know what are you thinking, and yes happines is bad too, why it is bad, well in small doses it is good, but let’s put it this way, do you remenber how many times you promised the world when you were too dam happy? How many of theese promised have you made? How many times you have said: Tomorrow i’ll learn chinese? Did you put your hands into work? That’s why happines is bad too. Happines is good in small doses, the same as fear, fear avoids you to jump out of a plane with no parachutes. You get the idea?
Well this is what i do to deal with emotions:
Just before i open mt4 i set the cursor on the desktop icon, inhale deeply (without forcing my lungs) keep the finger just above the “enter” key and start counting to 20, when i reach 10 i release the aire and then press enter and do nothing until i reach 20. By the moment i get 20 i am just relaxed and i am able to watch the market completely careless. If i see an opportunity i just go for it, bam! just lik Milciades, bump right against the persian centre. And then again i inhale and count to 20. Time to time i watch over the market and i close positions when it reaches the terget or whe the system tells me so. Once the position is closed i inhale again and count to 20. No matter if i win or i loose the procedure is the same.
But nothing is perfect, this technique has it floods, in fact all emotional techniques has their floods, it is called fatigue and boredom. How to deal with it, use another technique. When frustration takes place, belive it always will, i just scale to another technique, i start the chronometer, messure the lenght of the emotion and then i know how long would last next time, and so when it comes again i just run the chronometer again and trust that the emotion eventually will fade away.
But this one also has its floods. So i need it to scale a little more, this technique i use it only as a last resort, it’s quite easy, when i cannot control myself after reseting the chronometer twice (my chronometer meassures up to 12 hours), well i just imagine all the stuff arround me becoming alive (just like transformers) and imagine them all laughing without control, i imagin them all pointing at me and laughing, it eventually will make me laugh. Crazy but it works.
And there is one other technique tha is inspired by zen masters, in fact it has nothing to do with zen, it is taught in self defense schools, it is for enhance observation, a proper knowledge of the enviroment diminish the level of stress of uncertainty, the technique goes as it follows:
[I]Pick a spot in a room and for anything in the world remove your eyes from it, don’t look anywhere else, instead try to take conciense of what is sorrounding it without moving your eyes and gradually widen your vision. Do it before sleeping for the time you think you can hold it, it is very frustrating at the begining. And that’s it. The rest of the day try to become aware of the enviroment, when you go to gym instead of thinking oh I am tired, fix your gaze on a spot and try to create patterns with it, look for shapes and you will hold a little longer at the gym. When you read try to read more than one line at the time, this last one is very difficult.
With this technique you train your brain to work faster without you even notice it. And why it is called Zen if it does not have anything to do with meditation?, well it is because when you become aware of almost everything sorrounding you it is more difficult to catch you unprevented and it will be easier for you to overcome any event, you’ll become rescilient. It is not easy to explain. You have to give it a try.[/I]
Regards.