Playing a competitive sport can help develop our winning mindset. We can enhance our trading skills by honing our winner’s mental edge.

I’m a tennis player who plays competitive tennis singles where it’s just me against my opponent. Being a strongly competitive person at heart, I’m there to win and throw both body and mind into the strong desire to bring home the trophy.

What I find is that playing competitive sport with a serious desire to win has large similarities to trading success, when the stakes are high and the outcomes matter to you.

Let’s hop over the net and jump inside my head to take a look at the parallels between tennis and trading with our thinking.

  • I’m getting started with my tennis game with little time to warm up. “Gosh, I’m so rusty. How can I feel awkward like a beginner every time I start my game? It’s not like I picked up a racket yesterday!”

No matter how long you’ve been trading, a break can make you rusty. Do you notice with your trading that if you have a break for Christmas or another holiday, you’re more prone to mistakes or to forget some important criteria?

It’s imperative to have a written down trading plan to refer to and a defined process that protects and guards against mistakes. Never lose your caution.

  • What am I doing? I’m so keen to win each tennis game that I’m trying to play winners, rather than letting the point play out and waiting for my opportunity.

I’m analyzing the details of my trading to understand how to improve. I can see that I’m trying too hard to have winning trades. I’m tempted to break the cardinal rule to “cut losses short and let winners run,” by taking profits before my trading plan says to.

I remind myself that what matters is not how this one trade turns out, but my metrics over a large sample of trades (the whole tennis match) and how that translates into the overall outcome of my trading.

  • I feel nervous and tensed up because this tennis game means something and the stakes are high. I don’t feel loose or myself when I play my shots. Being quite tight and anxious is causing me to not play my best. The game is not going well for me.

In trading I need to constantly trade and expand my comfort zone for handling larger risk. As my trading capital increases, the trade sizes go up and sometimes they’re at amounts I’m not used to or comfortable with. This can make me anxious.

But I know I need to push through it because, like anything, after operating at a level for some time, it becomes comfortable and like second nature. “Keep going,” I say to myself.

  • I remind myself that at this level of tennis, lowering my unforced errors (my own mistakes) is likely to win or lose the match. I’m well behind by now so I decide there’s nothing to lose and I’ll concentrate on practicing excellent technique.

I’m in control of my trading because I can improve my own consistency and adherence to my trading plan. Over time that’ll produce the edge inherent in my trading system(s). I can’t control my opponent, but I can control myself.

  • Wow, I’m almost at the end of this tennis game and I’m now ahead while focusing on my own technique and letting the match take care of itself. There’s a bit of the tennis match left to go and I want to finish on a high and stretch out my lead. Fire up the tanks and leave nothing on the table, as I play to win with everything I’ve got left and more. But wait up! I need to remember how I got ahead and not change a winning formula.

Now that I’m reaching new equity highs, it would be great to stay there and stretch out the profits further before the end of the month. I remind myself that I got here by applying consistent technique over and over. I’ll continue to stick to the trading plan and be steadfast until the end.

Just like competitive tennis or other sport, the game is largely won or lost in your mind.

Through competitive sport we can practice our skills of mental psychology and handling the mental pressure of outcomes that matter. With awareness we can apply the learning’s and experiences from competitive sport to improve our trading.

So go out there and have fun playing a sport you enjoy where winning counts. Learn to control your mind to become a winner and take these skills to your trading for success.

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