Finding your balance as a Trader

Are you having trouble finding the balance between your trading and the rest of your life? Since you took up trading, do you seem to be possessed by it? Trading can be all-consuming. You don’t seem to have time for your family, or any recreational activities. Is it always going to be that way? Have you gotten into something in which you are now trapped?

What I'm describing is what happens to many people when they first get involved with the markets. Learning to trade can be an all-consuming effort. In fact, it is so all-encompassing, that even if you are failing, you keep on trying to make it work because you have so much time and money invested in it that you simply can’t let go. So you continue putting time and money into the effort until you are financially or emotionally exhausted—sometimes both.

Life demands a balance between emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual energy forces. If one part of a trader's life is overly focused on money, his family life loses its balance and falls. The ability to have and maintain long-term loving relationships defines a true winner perhaps better than any other characteristic. When material values replace emotional and spiritual values, the meaning of money needs to be examined. Why does a trader want money? It is a "means value," not an "ends value." Either the trader takes responsibility and creates his life's balance, or life and its participants do it for him.

Joe Ross

 

AMEN!!! Very well said.

 

Well said, Joe. I have followed your work for several years now. Trading can become all consuming, if you let it just like anything else that has some compulsion to it!

It should be handled like a business and left at the office even if the office is down the hall.

Regards

 

on a related topic ... saving money ...

although this link is meant for "non traders"
a certain but of it can apply to all of us

I just realized how when my income was higher
from trading I was spending more money than now ( when it is lower )

( some of my expenses are deductable for a trader but some of which is just money down the drain )

http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/millionaire/1287

 

Are you having trouble finding the balance between your trading and the rest of your life?
No.
Life is either giving you contentment or it is not.

 

Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Amen my brother, Joe. I know where you are coming from. 10 years ago forex trading was my life when I started. I have learned over time to become more balanced. Thanks for the reminder.

 

Hello, Jo. What you are on about happens, it probably happens a lot. I've been obsessed with the markets from the word go. Since being involved in the markets i've learnt a lot, about the particular markets i look at, about myself and about other people. I can't deny that i don't think about the money aspect of the markets, but, i also find price action fascinating and i enjoy finding my own 'solutions' to the markets i trade. Good trading.

 

I find now that whenever i see a computer screen, I start thinking about trading. Like today i was in the grocery store and as the girl was scanning my items i couldnt help but be fixated on how the price was going up at the same time thinking "should i get out now?" hehe

 

I think that this thread is a good antidote to threads such as the one about trading from a cruise ship. I am still waiting for the thread about how one can engage in trading while undergoing a root canal procedure.

 

Cruise ships! Why didn't he just ring the captain? Why ask that sort of question on here? Anyway, i would prefer to forget about that one. This thread is much better. In fact, it's an insult to even compare this thread to the cruise ship one. Enough said about ships.