One of the best things to do for fear,anxiety, and stress: Regular exercise.
Regular exercise can be a very potent antidote to strong feelings.
There is a strong link between exercise and our state of mind, and the effect is immediate. It is a simple and very effective way to regulate mood. In general, people who exercise regularly are less prone to mood problems than those who do not.Regular aerobic exercise was as good as medicine in treating this serious
mental illness.
As people become more accustomed to these physical symptoms through exercise,they become hardened and habituated to them. In other words, they become
more mentally tough when it comes to uncomfortable bodily sensations because they routinely accept them in exercise. What earlier was felt as disagreeable becomes perceived as innocuous with exercise.
Exercise itself is a form of stress, requiring effort and adaptation. It puts your body into better shape, which empowers it to better handle other stress, including
the stress from trading. Studies show that those who engage in a program of exercise have less physiological activation and intensity of common stress markers such as elevated blood pressure and heart rate as well as lower psychological markers of mood and symptoms of anxiety when confronted by stress. Exercise helps people adapt to stress. Those who persist in a regular routine of exercise also learn the same mental skills that help them to persist in holding a trade rather than cutting it short or delaying immediate gratification and holding back from jumping into a trade even though there is an urge to do so. In general, stress is a daily consideration in the trading environment and exercise will clearly help buff er you from its harmful eff ects. mentally, physically, and trading wise.
One of the most important is exercise elevates and balances neurochemicals.Exercise naturally increases serotonin, a neurochemical that has a calming eff ect on our mood and enhances our sense of security.
Physiologically, exercise reduces overall muscle tension, improves the cardiovascular system, lowers blood pressure, and lowers the resting tension of the major
muscle groups that are automatically activated in stressful situations. Exercise helps to reset the stress threshold. Through exercise, we harden the body and the brain to stress in a positive way. Exercise also has a psychological effect over and above making us feel better. Psychologically,we are actively doing something to cope with stress. We are taking action.
This gives us a sense of control over what we are able to influence. The combination of all these factors: increasing calming and mood enhancing neurochemicals in the brain, elevating our stress tolerance both physically and mentally, breaking down the feedback loop between muscle tension and fear, and generating efficacy over ourselves opens up the potential to take constructive action when in a trading situation that normally invokes stress or fear rather than the rigid, inflexible actions we might typically make. This can be potent for a trader hampered by fear and anxiety.
It is very hard to be a competent trader if you are plagued by anxiety each time you put on a trade or step up size. You can feel like a nervous wreck with
no control over your anxiety and trading. Your trading world and how you operate within it shrinks. You are likely to find yourself repeating the same rigid patterns over and over, unable to break free. You may begin to doubt yourself as a trader and even as a person. Adding to the anxiety are feelings of shame, sadness, and maybe hopelessness.
With exercise You may begin to see yourself as taking an active, rather than a passive approach to your trading. Things are not so hopeless. You can begin to lower sensitivity to anxiety, increase calming neurochemicals and hormones, increase your tolerance for stress.