Key Points:
- Build self-awareness to leverage emotions in trading.
- Practice welcoming difficult emotions like anxiety to transform your mindset.
- Regular mindfulness exercises can create an edge in trading decisions.
Summary:
In this midday mindfulness session, Sean Sawyer guides the community by embracing emotions to enhance self-awareness, specifically within trading. He emphasizes recognizing distractions during mindfulness exercises, encouraging traders to refocus without judgment. The session’s core exercise involves breathing techniques paired with difficult emotions—like anxiety—as if they were an ‘old friend.’ This approach, treating difficult emotions as familiar and manageable, fosters a more productive relationship with emotions that often arise during trading, such as fear, FOMO (fear of missing out), or revenge trading.
Sean highlights the necessity of this mindfulness practice, noting that it helps traders slow down and collect more emotional and physical data. This increased awareness provides a significant edge, often overlooked by traders prioritizing speed over clarity.
“Building the ability to be self-aware will help your trading decisions and life—it’s an edge worth investing in.” — Sean Sawyer.
C.L.E.A.R. Mindset Connections:
Connect to the present moment and enhance your self-awareness with practical techniques.
- Focus on your breath to anchor yourself in the present and build the habit of noticing emotions and distractions without reacting.
Loosen your attachment to thoughts and emotions, and cultivate mental clarity and resilience.
- Welcome emotions like anxiety or fear, recognizing them as part of the experience rather than something to avoid, helping you become less reactive during trades.
Embody your core values and align them with your actions to foster authenticity and purpose.
- Acknowledge that embracing difficult emotions can lead to more authentic trading decisions. By ‘authentic ‘, we mean decisions rooted in clarity and reason rather than impulse or fear. This approach can lead to more consistent and successful trading outcomes.
Accept all the present moment offers, whether wanted or not, and find peace and strength.
- Invite emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, and build peace and strength by accepting them as a natural part of the trading experience.
Respond with decisive, informed action, transforming challenges into opportunities for growth.
- Harness the awareness gained through mindfulness to make more informed and deliberate trading decisions, turning emotional challenges into a strategic advantage.
Act Accordingly:
This session underscores the value of mindfulness as a tool for traders. By welcoming emotions, traders can cultivate a more transparent, balanced mindset, ultimately leading to better trading decisions and a stronger sense of control over their actions.