Trading on Target: How to Cultivate a Winner's State of Mind

CREATING A BALANCE

To make this paradox work, it is necessary to create a balance between the opposing forces of routine and flexibility. The best way to accomplish this is to make conscious choices in your life that expand into areas that are outside of your trading. For example:

• Order new things from the menu or eat new types of food
• Take a trip to a city or country that you have never visited
• Read new materials—novels if you read non-fiction or subjects that you may have never considered like history or philosophy
• Listen to music that you do not ordinarily listen to—jazz, classical, opera, New Age, Indian music
• Attend a meeting that represents people with whom you don’t normally associate
• Take courses in fields of study that are not associated with work—art classes, courses in science or law
• Attend worship services with a different religion or sect
• Volunteer to work with handicapped, disadvantaged, sick, or elderly people
• Join a task force or a volunteer rescue squad

Any new activity or challenge that stretches your imagination opens new perspectives that will help create the kind of versatility in your thinking that will allow you to maintain that fragile but ever-important balance in your thinking.