Right now, we’re going to take a look at our morning ritual. I’ll share with you eight key ideas to creating a morning ritual for starting your day.
If you’re a stock trader, this should give you some insight into creating your own. I’m not going to do it for you, but it’s all about giving you some things to think about when creating your own plan.
This book >>> Mindsets of a Master Stock Trader will help you on the way of creating your morning ritual as well.
It’s always important to have a routine. When you think about a routine, it’s something that is repetitive.
We look at a ritual even higher and bigger than a routine. It’s like starting out your day with a good breakfast. The same thing here is putting all these things and gears and motions just like warming up a car is important.
That way, you have a nice flow throughout your day. I’m going to give you some things to think about. Of course, you could plan out your day and morning as you see fit of what’s best for you.
One of the first things that you may want to think about is appreciation and gratitude. It’s important that you appreciate where you’re at right now. If you’re unhappy and have a lot of negative energy of where you’re at right now, you’re going to rub that negativity into trading.
That’s because you’re going to keep trying to make it back. You’ll always think that you have to make that trade back. That you have to make that money back. You’re going to be greedy about it, and it’ll start sucking the life out of you.
Be appreciative of where you’re at. The main reason is if you have an excellent foundation, a nice base to where you’re at, you’ll be more clear-minded to putting on trades and executing trades.
You’ll also be more clear-minded about taking profits in the strengths. Otherwise, if you’re not grateful for where you’re at, you’re going to try to hold trades a lot longer than you should. You’ll be greedy about it, and more than likely, they’ll reverse on you.
That’s why it’s important to appreciate where you’re at and be grateful.
You can apply some of these steps:
- spend a few minutes thinking about this throughout the day
- writing it down in your journal
That’s totally up to you. But think about how to incorporate this even for a few minutes before you start getting at that trading desk and start putting on in executing trades.
It’s all about making sure that you are more positive towards the energy that you have.
The WRONG approach: Saying to yourself that today I’m going to make $50,000 or I’m going to make $1,000.
The RIGHT approach: It’s really about saying to yourself that these are the things that I’m good at. These are the things that I’m going to work on. These are the things that I can improve.
You need to understand that it’s all about lifting your spirits emotionally. That way, you can be more clear-minded. In trading, it’s a hugely a mental business and a mental game.
And if you don’t have that clear mind, if you’re always negative and if you don’t have that positiveness in you, you doubt yourself.
That positive energy inside of you is important to drive you. That way, you will make the right decisions.
There’s nothing wrong with doubt. But if you have all these negative things coming at you that create the uncertainty, there’s something wrong with that. Sometimes talking in front of the mirror to yourself can help alleviate that.
You don’t have to spend an hour with it, but a couple of minutes could lift your spirits and be a little more positive for you throughout that day.
Be honest and ask yourself these questions:
- where are you now
- where do you want to go
- why are you trading
Maybe you’re doing this because you want to be in a better place later on. Perhaps you want to help support your family. Or you want to evolve to what level. Visualize why are you doing this.
If you have no purpose behind it, what’s the point of doing it. In that case, enjoy yourself by the beach and relax. Do something that you enjoy because that’s the WHY.
The case might be that you’re doing something, and you’re still struggling as a new trader; that is another story.
There is nothing wrong with your struggle. However, you have to understand where the struggle is.
- Why you’re struggling, and for what reason and purpose?
- Is it for your kids?
- Is it for your kid’s education?
- Is it for you because you have medical expenses so that way you could live a longer life?
Whatever the case is, understand your WHY and WHERE.
Where you want to be, and why are you doing this. That might be another benefit to that mental spirits.
What’s your goal for today?
I’m not talking about day trading here. A lot of day traders will speak to you about setting a $400 goal limit. It’s not about that because that’s not something you can control.
Scenario #1:
Let’s say you don’t want to trade at all. And you’re scared to put on your first trade. Well, in that case, your daily objective might be to trade one share every day for the next five days. That might be a daily objective, and you can control that.
Scenario #2:
It could be that your daily objective is to follow your rules and plan for every trade. Or to make sure you have a plan before you enter every single trade. That’s something you can control.
The thing is you can’t control the amount of stock moves. Unless you have a boatload of money that you’re personally moving the stock. But in general, you can control the internal things.
Ask yourself this: Do you have a plan for every trade?
Your daily objective might be to set a plan for every single trade to follow that plan. It might be that you make sure that you’re taking a positive balance throughout the day. That you’re not just at the computer screens all the time.
It might be reducing your watch time or analyzing the stock a lot less than spending two hours trying to pick and figure out a stock. Some people overanalyze things. Figure out what your daily objective is.
When you have good physical health, there are endorphins. A lot of positive energy that comes out also helps mental health.
Working a bit on your physical health, including stretching, exercise, cardio, can help boost a lot of other things in and around your life.
It’s crucial to find some time for your physical health.
I’m not talking about just the psychiatric part of it. I’m also talking about exercising your mind. It doesn’t matter if that’s playing brain exercises or activities like chess, a card game, or reading.
Just like when you exercise your body, you’re exercising your heart when you’re running. But mental health is also just as important. Make sure my brain is working and reacting quickly.
And part of that has to do with diet, nutrition and the physical part of things as well. All of that is important to get your brain working and operating very efficiently. But a lot of it also has to do with exercising your brain. Not everybody exercises their brain.
Find an activity when it comes to the mental part.
That could be something like:
- reading 10-20 minutes a day
- a game like chess or cards
- something creative that you like
All of that can help boost your daily productivity and positive emotions. It will set you up for success.
If you’re training people to lose weight for 5 hours a day, when you get home, you’re not going to recharge yourself by exercising further or more.
Instead, what you can probably do is relaxing, or you could be reading. You want to do something opposite of physical.
Now, if you have a mental business (something like trading), you might need to do something opposite to balance yourself out.
Key takeaway: Mental business might need something spiritual, emotional, or physical to balance things out. You’re not going to balance things out in a mental business by doing more study and more homework.
You need something physical or emotional. It could be something like running, stretching, or yoga. Remember, it’s always something opposite. You have the physical, emotional, and spiritual part. Do something opposite, and that’ll help create some balance in your life.
The wrong approach is to keep drilling the same thing over and over again. Spend some time with your family and friends. That will get you away from overthinking and overexerting your mind or brain.
Reach back out and send those vibes back. I like doing this through video. A lot of people wonder why do I make videos. It’s because it allows me to reconnect and reach back out. It gets my brain pushing some energy waves away for me rather than a lot of times I’m absorbing energy. I’m trying to figure things out myself, and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.
This way, I’m taking things out and pushing it back on you. You’re getting a lot of insights and benefits out of it. And it helps me to clear my mind.
Find what works for you. It could be talking to a friend. It could be going to play a sports basketball game. That way, you’re doing something physical and getting away from the mental. You’re also interacting with people that way. Give some positive love. Find yourself to bouncing these things out.
You might be wondering how long should I be doing this or putting these ideas into play throughout my day.
Well, you could spend five minutes on each one of these in the morning. Then you have a nice balance to getting started in the day.
Whether you’re exercising 5 minutes of cardio or jumping rope for 20 minutes, it doesn’t matter what might be the case for you.
Find where these things work for you. For some people, the morning routine could take 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get some of these things going. Other people need 2-3 hours.
You’ll figure out what’s the sweet spot for you, depending on when you wake up. You might wake up at 5:00 a.m. That way, you have enough time before work.
Sometimes for me, it’s 4:30 in the morning or 5:00 a.m. When I get up, I might do 10-15 minutes of yoga, do a little bit of reading, or I might check in on my team.
Connecting with my team is important for me, and that gives me a little more personal interaction time. But for everybody it’s different.
Find your balance and create a schedule and think about incorporating some of these things. You don’t have to do it all right away.
Start incorporating one idea, then maybe a second idea, then perhaps a third idea. And eventually, you’ll find and tweak a morning ritual that works for you.
That way, you have an excellent start to your trading day and your overall day remembering on the bigger picture of why you’re doing this.
