 What does it take to become a successful trader? How can you overcome emotions and boost performance? Check out these performance tips from the former director of strength and conditioning at the New York Yankees, Dana Cavaletta. To become a champion in anything, it's hard, right? It takes discipline, it takes focus, it's an attitude. And most importantly, I always say it takes a champion's mindset because there's so many ways for us to get off track. So it's really important that you're able to maintain your focus, both in the short term and in the long term. And that's very difficult for people. And the one thing that athletes do really well that great traders do as well is they have an ability to separate from their emotions. They don't make decisions based on emotions, they make decisions based on their instincts. And to be a great trader, you have your data and you have your knowledge and you have your education, but without your instincts, you're dead in the water. You're never going to trade to absolute perfection. So stop trying. Stop trying to be a perfect trader. Be a competitive trader that uses instinct and education and acquired knowledge to be great. How do you separate from your emotions? How do you do this? And I have a simple diagram that I put together and I say, to get to that state, right, you have to have, you have habits and you have routines and those determine your results, right? If you have negative habits and you have negative routines, you're going to get negative results. If you have positive habits, positive routines, the chances of you having positive results go way up. So what do we do? We start teaching habits. What time do you wake up? What time do you go to bed? Very important. And then what do you do to train your body, train your physicality? Because trading is competitive. It's going to call upon you in a very deep way, in an emotional way. If you're strong and physical and you train your body, in turn you're going to strengthen your mind and you're going to feel more comfortable separating from your emotions. Some people may be out there and saying, wait, this guy's telling me I have to be in great shape to be a trader. And I'm telling you, yes, because you're going to have to be in great shape physically and mentally to endure what it is that trading is going to give you and bring you both the positive in terms of the financial gain and the success, but also the negative, which is going to strip you naked and make you feel very vulnerable at times. So you have to be ready for both. Get your habits right and then you have to be consistent in those habits and that consistency in your habits, that becomes your day-to-day routine. Now, players like Derek Jeter, some of the greatest players in the world, they know that there are going to be times that you're going to fail, but that doesn't mean you're a failure. There's going to be times as a trader that you get bad results. It doesn't mean that you're a bad trader. It just means you didn't have a good day. That's the sport. That's the game. That's what trading is, but trading is also an average. It's not what you do today. It's what you do over a 365-day year or it's based on what you do every day you sit down to trade. That's what it's based on and that's what I speak a lot about. I try to talk to traders to grab a hold of their emotional state and not allow outcomes to drive their decision-making and not allow the outcome to determine who they are as a person and who they are as a trader. And it's super, super important to grab a hold of that. The greatest traders, the greatest CEOs, the greats of private equity, the great athletes, they are all very secure in who they are and they realize that there is no amount of wealth that they can achieve that will make them secure. Security starts with yourself and that's how great traders become great traders. They're not looking for a big score to feel great about themselves. They expect a great score over time because they have great habits and they have great routines and they're very secure in themselves. The other thing I say is you got to know why you play the game that you're playing. Why are you trading? How much do you need to earn to live the life that you want to live? These are all really important questions that most people don't ask. Most people go out every day and they try and hit a home run as a trader, but remember, if you are positive today, that's a good day. If you're positive tomorrow, it's a good day. I work with guys that say, hey, I made $4,000 and they're upset because they didn't make five. I said, well, you could have made zero or you could have lost $4,000. So you got to realize that we're at the casino, right? We're trying to take all the chips and we're trying to pull them over to our side, but sometimes we take just a couple of chips. Sometimes we take them all, but you have to be okay taking one chip, two chips, three chips, and over time, you start to stack your results. And when you stack your results, over time, you become a success. It's an exercise. It's called the horizon line, okay? So it's simply this, right? When we look out at a horizon, what's above the horizon? Is the sun, right? The sun is above the horizon. So we look at the sun is all positive, optimistic, success, everything that we want is above the line. Everything below the line is negative. It's slow. It's, it's all dark. So as a trader, when you're below the line, you need to do things to peak yourself above the line. And for me, that's a focus shift. I call it mind shifting. You just mind shift yourself above the line. Hey, I'm feeling down and things aren't going well. Oh my God, what am I going to do? Hey, I'm going to take action and I'm going to move myself towards where it is that I have to go. So you move yourself above the line. And that allows you to say, Hey, I lost today. That's a below the line thing. But mentally, I'm going to move myself above the line because tomorrow I'm going to go out to win. So listen, to be, to be great at anything, it takes a lot of confidence and self belief. So you have to prime that in your brain. You have to put that there. Nobody's going to put it there for you. So what I say is, if you're feeling weak and not really confident, the first thing you should say is I am strong. I am confident. I am strong. I am confident and keep putting that in your head. So I say, listen, most people shower every day. That's a great time to prime your pump and get yourself primed up to take on your day. I'm ready to go. I'm a champion today. I'm going to trade like a champion. I'm going to have a great day. I'm going to manage my energy. I'm going to have great energy today when I sit down to trade. I'm going to have a successful day. I'm going to compete today as a trader. You haven't even traded yet. You may not, at that point, you probably didn't even have breakfast yet, but you're prepping your brain to see success and optimize your own mental psychology and state.