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So I get a lot of questions about what can you do about your mind? How do you help your mindset? It’s not just about learning the tactical aspects of trading, although that’s what everyone’s trying to sell you is if that’s the panacea and if that’s going to be the cure to your issues. But to me, it’s more about your approach to life because trading is just a subset to a bigger mindset. So I’ve been the inner voice of trading, right? But I’ve always had a strong inner game. I didn’t know what to call it because I just thought it was normal. I thought everybody acted the way I did, and maybe they do in their own way. But the way that I kind of enhance what’s going on in my brain is through yoga, meditation. But I don’t think you have to do sit there in lotus position on a yoga mat or a bolster, trying to look at the candle and figure out what’s the meaning of life.
The quieting of your mind just allows you to have a higher level of intensity, a higher level of focus. So I would completely look at that as you could look at anything as a form of meditation, right? So yes, I can sit still and meditate. It’s not easy at first. Your mind’s going a thousand miles an hour, but to me, it’s fun. I get to sit down, quiet, turn off the phone, turn off all the alerts and the emails and all that kind of stuff, turn off the market minding and blah, blah, blah, and start to focus on just by breath. And that allows me to kind of quiet my mind when that happens. My mind is still working on things in my subconscious. I can’t necessarily explain the process, but it works for me. It is difficult at first to kind of sit and quiet your mind, but if you sit there, you close your eyes and you focus on inhaling and exhaling, that’s a good way to find your entry point.
But it’s also true that you could do something completely inane. Like if you’re just cleaning the house, you can find a meditation inside of that. If you’re into gardening, right? You’d be digging in the dirt, pulling out weeds, whatever it might be. I like to paint. I like to play guitar. I can lose myself and find any particular thing meditative. I can go inward. It really benefits me quite a lot because there’s so much going on in my life doing all these damn episodes, which frankly are a pain in the ass. You know what I mean? I’m busy. I really don’t have time to do a lot of these. So I have this week’s episodes I’m doing at the very last minute. I just didn’t have any time, but that’s because I’m meditating and I’m using my yoga. The yoga to me. I was lucky enough to be able to study with Eric Schiffman. He wrote a really great book on it called, he’s a yoga teacher, pretty well known guy, super sweet person, love him to death. He wrote a great book if you want to read about it, called Moving Into Stillness. And he was my teacher

Of them for a long, long time, for over 10 years and over on the west side. And so I really learned a lot from him on how to think about yoga, not as trying to become flexible. That’s not really the point, although that’s a benefit. I just how to feel good inside your body and think about yoga as it in and of itself as a moving meditation. Which brings me to my next point, which is hard for me. I like to go to classes and I do. I used to go seven days a week before we all got 2020, and now I kind of go to certain classes depending on the teacher, and because I have the space, I have someone come to my house. So we do it here, but that’s because I want to control the environment. What do I mean by that?
Well, I like to lose myself in the class. I’m not going there necessarily at this stage after doing yoga for 20 years to kind of learn new poses and any type of a pose that you’d see in a calendar, you don’t need that. That’s like the advanced charting packages with these trading platforms. It’s all kind of ego based showing off these crazy positions that maybe they benefit you, maybe they don’t. But it takes years and years of practice to kind of get there. It doesn’t really prove much, but everyone evolves at their own pace. I always just look at them and kind of raise my eyebrows. But you can still find a lot of benefit in doing basic sun salutations and just quieting your mind, close your eyes because then you’re not bringing in that data as an input. You can hear things, I suppose, if you don’t put on noise canceling headphones, but you can really lose yourself in that and quiet your mind.
And it’s even beneficial for one day. So that’s why I do it is because I have so much going on. It helps me concentrate better when I need to concentrate. And sometimes my best ideas are when I’m sitting there just in stillness and the light bulb will go off. That happens for me a lot. And being super creative person, I kind of need that almost as my methodology. So you might find some benefit there. I know it’s difficult to light the candle, sit there, cross-legged. Most guys don’t have the hips to sit cross-legged Indian style, I suppose they would say on the floor. But you could find anything or any way that works for you. You could sit in an upright chair, just sit with good posture and lower your head. Try to quiet your mind for 15, 30 seconds. It’s a start. It’s just like anything else in life. You’re not going to be able to meditate like a Buddhist monk at the beginning, but you can get there. I don’t believe for those of you that are listening or watching, thanks for being here and saying like, oh, I can’t do that. It’s too much. My mind’s too busy. You’re the ideal candidate.

You just have to put your mind to doing it. So that’s what I would do. But I would endorse that practice of yoga and meditation I see as one and the same, at least it is for me. You might find something different in your own practice, but I would definitely encourage you because that helps you exercise your brain and stops your brain working on mindless things that don’t really matter in your life. That certainly aren’t going to add up necessarily to your trading. So that’s kind of why I like to do it too, is that it helps me stay super focused. And to be honest with you, if I didn’t have that in my life, well probably wouldn’t be able to do this show because I have to really economize my time and use my time effectively and efficiently. And I think when you think about trading or managing money or managing risk where you can sit still for a while and it allows you time to process things when you’re constantly in kinetic energy, that’s another vibe going through your body. So you might find great benefit in moving into stillness. There’s also some other good books. There’s a lot of stuff on the internet if you wanted to do yoga. Light on yoga is probably as good as any book. I think that’s Iyengar’s book, but it’s, again, it’s only one style. There’s so many different styles of yoga. I practice haha yoga, but any number of it would be good, whether it’s Kundalini or otherwise, or this and that.

The post Several ways to approach meditation first appeared on MartinKronicle.

The post Several ways to approach meditation appeared first on MartinKronicle.