 Welcome back to the Trade Hacker Mindset podcast. In this episode, we have a guest. Trader Bianca is with us. Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach. Professional traders have a secret. Trading requires total mental and emotional control. It requires the Trade Hacker Mindset. All right, let's jump in. Trader Bianca, how are you? Good, how are you? What's going on with you these days? Well, you know, just same old thing here every day, doing my thing. Awesome. So to give everyone a little bit of a background, you know, if you're part of our community, then you most likely know Bianca from her posts and things like that. She's also been part of our zero DTE mastermind and she presented kind of her trade plan, which is available in the zero DTE trade plan channel. Part of what she talked about during that presentation was a lot around mindfulness and mindset and what she does from that capacity. So I wanted to go a little bit deeper on that today, Bianca, with you, but I think, let's start here. Tell us a little bit about pre-trading Bianca. What was your life like before trading? And then we'll get into your trading journey. Yeah, so I come from an art background, essentially. And so I'm a very visual person. So I started out as a furniture maker, furniture designer. I actually built furniture and, you know, from there went into the art world. And at some point that I don't exactly know when or how this happened, but I saw a chart. And I went, oh, wow. That's kind of visually kind of cool. No idea really what I was looking at. And you were born and raised in Germany. Was this while you're still in Germany? No, that was already over here in the States. I had already come here. I came here when I was about 24. So I went to college here. So that's how that started. But yeah, so I was looking at a chart and it really kind of sparked some kind of an interest in me. I've always been a person likes, you know, her independence. I never really wanted to work for anyone else. I've always sort of done my own thing. And so that trading naturally really appealed to me. Initially it was just, you know, stocks, you know, cause I had no clue what options were. I'd never even heard of it, I think at that point. So that's how that started. And being a visual person, I was initially obviously really attracted to technical analysis. And that really, you know, took like a deep dive into that. And yeah, that's pretty much where I started. That was many moons ago, probably over 20 years ago at this point that I started that journey. And- So you started off trading directionally with stocks and then how did you end up in the options world? Yeah, I was doing direct, I was going directionally with stocks. And because, you know, being an artist, you know, I didn't really have a whole lot of money to throw at anything, you know, sort of like struggling artists, so to speak, at least in the beginning. And so it was all just little, little stuff and it was just playing around really, not really doing much with that. And then, you know, life kind of took over, started a family, you know, did a whole bunch of things and really focused on my art career. And, you know, and then at some point throughout that process of, you know, living my life and having my art career also became a certified yoga instructor where I think this whole mindfulness comes into play, you know, with the trading, even though initially I didn't make that connection. It took me a while to see how those things that I had learned in that process, you know, doing yoga and becoming a yoga instructor and teaching that kind of stuff for over 20 years actually applies to what I do in trading. And so that was really kind of an aha moment for me when I realized how I had actually a skill set that I could translate into trading when that hadn't really occurred to me before. So that was interesting. And so you're, obviously you're doing a lot of zero DTE premium selling, things like that. What are you doing outside of zero DTE from a strategy standpoint? I have on longer-term trades that are still, you know, premium selling trades, but they're just really longer-term trades. I like a lot of ratio stuff. You've probably heard of the 112 trades, that kind of stuff. I do a lot of that stuff. I don't, I try, I truly, I really try to stay away from stocks at this point. I don't really love them anymore. I don't really want anything to do with them. You're a full options convert, huh? I'm just an options convert. I just, at some point, you know, I started to, yeah, about 2018 or so, after we moved from Miami, we moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. And at that point, I think I was, I opened a Tasty account and I was looking at their feed, you know, they have that live stuff every day. And I listened to them for about 15 minutes and I went, this is nonsense. I have no clue what they're talking about. This is a whole other language. I have no idea what they're saying. And so I turned it off. And it was like running around in my head going, I really would like to know what they're saying, you know? It just bothered me that I couldn't understand it. And so I started that process of learning and, you know, different mentors at one point, different rooms, you know, all that jazz, you know? And it slowly started to trickle in. It took a long time because I'm also not a math person. So I always had to sort of like, you know, initially when they started to talk about iron condors, and it made no sense to me. I was like, how does this even work? I don't get it. And I had to literally like put it on a chart and see it visually how it sets up to really understand what was going on and how, you know, how it sets up. And I was like, that makes a little bit more sense now. So yeah, that was sort of the beginning of that. And then it just evolved from there, you know? Just learning little bits at a time, you know, really being paid. I had to be really patient with myself, you know, not coming from, I know a lot of people in the room and a lot of you guys, I don't know about you personally, but a lot of people in the room are, you know, have math backgrounds, have engineering backgrounds, you know, like this kind of stuff sort of comes naturally to them. And it doesn't for me at all. And so that's like a kind of like a double challenge. So I had to be really patient with myself and really allow myself to absorb this and just listen to things over and over again and see them happen over and over again so that it was just, at one point I could see the process happening as I would be listening to it. And initially something wouldn't make any sense. And then I would listen, hear somebody say it again and maybe again and again. And then all of a sudden I'd go, oh my God, of course. It was so obvious, but, you know, it took a minute for the penny to drop and for it to sink in. So, you know, and that still happens. I still feel like I don't know anything. You know, I just know basically how to get around. But, you know- You're doing pretty good for just barely knowing how to get around. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's okay. I mean, you know, good, not bad. Well, I think- But I feel like there's always something else to learn, right? There's like, it never ends. Oh, that never ends. Yeah, that never ends. I like about this, you know? Yeah, it's one thing I love about this because it's just a never-ending challenge. It's a never-ending process of reinvention and, you know, just adjusting. And, you know, and that's the whole connection for me to the whole mindfulness, you know? You have to cannot be rigid. You have to constantly adjust your thinking, adjust how you trade, adjust, adapt. I mean, it's like a constant process and requires so much agility in the mind, you know? It's like as soon as you become rigid, that's it. It doesn't work. Yeah, so one of the things that you had presented in our mastermind group as part of your presentation was a slide that I immediately took a screenshot of and put it onto my, so every morning when I do my kind of morning routine, preparation, and I put out to the community kind of our current positions and update and all that, you know, part of my kind of template document that I utilize, it has a few things on it. It's got, you know, some of the, some really bad trades that I made that I kind of remind myself of on a daily basis. This is what you don't want to do today. I'll do that. And then the other, you know, and so I have a lot of different things like that that I kind of go through on a daily basis. But then the other thing that I put on there was that image of the tree that you shared during your presentation. And obviously, you know, this is audio only, so I'll do my best to describe it, but essentially it's a picture of a forest and the main focus is on one big massive tree. And what Bianca did was she kind of labeled the different areas of the tree, the roots being the mindset. You know, and then you've got the trunk of the tree, which is your trading plan. And then, you know, different things in the branches, market knowledge, risk management, emotional intelligence, continuous learning, health. Now, I would argue a little bit that health might be closer to the trunk and mindset somewhere in between there as well. But regardless, I mean, it's perfect because, you know, like they say, an image is worth a thousand words. And so just kind of ingraining that on a daily basis of understanding, hey, you know, you've got it, your foundation is the mindset, your trade plan is the trunk, and everything else is kind of the ancillary branches. Talk a little bit more about that. Is that something that you came up with? Did you see that somewhere? What, tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, I actually came up with that particular image. Knowing and having, you know, read and researched a lot of the different components that are different strengths and different, yeah, different components of trading, you know, like the mindfulness, like the market knowledge, like, you know, the health part and taking information from all these different books that I had read at that point and trying to just, being a visual person, I need a visual, I need an image, I need something that I can latch on to in my head. And so I was thinking about this and then at some point, somebody said, you know, maybe it was Mark Douglas or somebody, maybe all of them probably said that, you know, the mindfulness, the mindset is really the base, the foundation for all of it. And so when I read that, I went, you know, foundation base, you know, like a tree, you know, like we have in yoga where we have poses that are, you know, the tree pose where we have a trunk and we're rooted into the floor and that's the foundation, that's how we stand up. That's how we hold ourselves up. So it kind of followed naturally from there to come up with that image. And yeah, it's great, it's great. I love that, I love that particular image and I'm glad you liked it too. Good stuff. I wanna talk about a little bit about your personal mindfulness practice, but before that, there's one other thing that you had touched on in your mastermind presentation and that's, you did kind of a comparison between goals versus process. Talk a little bit about how you think about those two things. Yeah, I think it's really tempting when you're a newer trader and I still consider myself a newer trader, especially with options. It's really tempting to say, oh, I need to make X amount of money and I know I need to make, I need to do, I need to have this amount every month in order to live or, you know, whatever. And it's very tempting to do that and then just go off the reservation and do anything to get there instead of really focusing more on the process of, you know, building your plan and following the plan and having your process down of what it is that you need to do in order to make all that happen. And that includes all these different aspects, you know, like the health part, the meditation, the, you know, the market awareness, all that stuff is included in process. So ideally when you have the process in place, the goal will follow naturally. So you don't have to, you know, it's, it's setting goals obviously is a good thing. You know, I'm not saying setting goals is a bad thing, but it cannot take precedent over process. Yeah, I think. First. Yeah, I think, you know, in a lot of different areas in life that we do, our careers, sports, musicians, you know, whatever it is, it's always, you know, we're always taught, create your goals, write down your goals, you know, based on what you want the results to be. And that's why I think a lot of people come into trading who have been successful in other professions and they fail miserably is because they try to take those same things that have been pounded into our heads since we were kids of here's how you become successful. And then you try it in trading and it doesn't work. And people are like, whoa, what happened? Yeah. And so, and I'm a big believer in that too is that, you know, I mean, I know for me, and everybody's going to be a little bit different, but I think, you know, for me, you know, I found the same thing where if I, if I tried to create financial goals, like I want to make this much a day, I want to make this much a week, I want to make this much a month, a year, I would find myself making decisions that I shouldn't be making in my trading because I had that goal in mind, whether it was subconsciously or consciously. And so I really refocused my goals to be process driven. Like I will follow my rules. I will, you know, I have my, you know, I have a whole thing that I do in my trader sink and my kind of my logs about, you know, tagging myself if I made a mistake or, you know, making notes about what I did wrong. And you know, so to me, the goals should be about the process, not financial goals in trading, which is so counterintuitive to so many people because trading is all about making money. So why shouldn't our goals be about making money? Right, exactly. And you know, it's, James Clear talks about this a lot actually, you know, how everybody has all these wonderful intentions at the beginning of the year, right? Let's say, you know, you wake up January 1st and you go, I'm going to lose 30 pounds and then nothing happens. You know, it's like, okay, well, what are you doing? What steps are you taking towards losing, you know, 30 pounds? Are you exercising? Are you keeping track of how much you eat? Are you doing anything to take steps towards that? Because otherwise it's just, you know, hot air. Nothing is going to happen. So, and sometimes I think it's difficult to translate that into trading because maybe what the process is, isn't entirely clear. Because that's also something that everyone has to sort of figure out for themselves. You know, it's not a cookie cutter. This is my process. This is your process. You know, you can use my process if you like, kind of thing. It doesn't work that way because everybody has a different process. It's different for everyone. And yeah. And that couldn't have come through more clear than when, you know, we started having our community members present their trade plans and a lot of people shared their processes. And, you know, I think we had, I don't know, 12 or 13 people present in everybody's strategies, processes, goal. I mean, everything was night and day, right? I mean, there were so many variations. And so, and that's a difficult part because a lot of people just want to come in and well, tell me what you're doing because you're successful. And I'll just copy you. It just doesn't work that way. You have to figure it out for yourself. Yeah. And even if you follow someone's trades, you know, to a certain degree, you know, you can follow someone's trades and replicate what they're doing. Yet there's still a whole other world around that one trade. If you want to continue to be successful at that one trade that you have to put in place, you know, all these different elements that you have to put in place and kind of figure out for yourself. You know, you have to, you have to do it. Yeah. And if you're copying somebody else's trades, you're also, as soon as they go through a drawdown and you start losing money, what are you going to do? You're jumping to the next thing. Exactly. You're done. Because you haven't built up that confidence or knowledge around that strategy. Right. Right, exactly. So, great. I love that, you know, I had that visual in the presentation with the goal of the guy on the mountaintop and then the climb. And Mauro was the inspiration for that particular image because I kept on thinking of him like he would say, Sonya, oh, I'm going climbing. And then sort of that kind of spun together in my head as the perfect image representation of goal and process. So. Yeah, for those of you who don't know Mauro, he's another member of our community. In fact, Mauro just agreed to be a guest on the podcast. So stay tuned for that one. Oh, that'll be fun. Cool, awesome. But he's an avid mountain climber. So that'll be fun. Yeah. All right, so Bianca, next question. So another concept that you talked about was your A to C game analysis. What does that mean? Yeah, you know, we all have these sort of strengths and weaknesses. And like with anything, and you know, the easiest thing I think is always to give an example from other parts of life because then the light bulb might go on because that's what happened to me as to what that actually might mean in trading. But you know, when you're, like let's say you're an athlete and you're always focusing on what you are already good at, then the thing that you're not so good at is gonna sort of stay behind. And you know, when you visualize that little inchworm, that little curve, the inchworm moves forward, you might improve your front end, but your back end is gonna stay stuck. And it's not gonna let you, at some point it's not gonna let you move forward because that back end is gonna keep getting stuck. So, you know, it's really important to improve on all aspects of our game, whether it's the A game or the C game, and not just focus, it's very human, to focus on the things that we're really good at already instead of giving some time to the things that maybe we're not so good at. And really just, and there's an aspect to that that I think is really important, you have to be really honest with yourself as to what you're not good at, because a lot of times we don't like to think about the things we're not good at, and we don't like to look at the things we're not good at, because it doesn't make us feel really nice and fuzzy and warm, you know, especially in trading because it might mean that you're losing money and so because of something that you keep doing, and you're just like, you know, just like push that out there and, you know, just not worry about it right now. But it's important to just, you know, be honest with ourselves as to, you know, what our strengths are and what our weaknesses are in order to move that A to C game forward. So I'm gonna put you on the spot. What is your A game and what is your C game? My C game, let me start with that. My C game is definitely not following my plan. I have struggled with that from the get-go. I, it's part of my personality, I think. I don't, I'm not a rule follower, and so never have been. So I'm always changing things. I'm always thinking, oh, I should do this, and I should change that. Or, you know, it's, yeah, so that's been a real struggle for me. And I also, you know, have realized that I don't have, because of probably the nature of where I am in my life, you know, I'm not 20 years old, I'm not 30 years old, and it puts a bit of a different perspective on what you've already accomplished and what your financial situation is. And so I don't quite have the risk tolerance of some of you guys in the room. And so that's been a real struggle for me to, you know, not fall into the trap of trying to be like Steve, you know, trying to be like Tim, you know, or trying to be like anyone else in the room really, you know, because there are a lot of really great traders in there. So, and just being myself and understanding and respecting who I am and what I can and cannot do. And yeah, that's, but I think, so my A game, one of my strengths is that and some people might consider this not a strength, but I am, I never oversized. I'm never tempted to go too big. I'm always within my framework, you know, I don't experience that kind of like, oh my God, this trade worked out for the past three weeks. So now I'm going to like go big. I do not do that at all. And maybe that's right. Maybe that's wrong, but I think for me, to me, that's, that's a good thing for me personally. And that's, that's another thing, you know, it's like you always have to look at this as a personal thing. I know that some people probably say, well, that's, that's not a good thing. That's a bad thing. You know, you want to go big when, when you've had this kind of success, but I don't. And that's worked for me. And, you know, so I, I know at this point, what I can and cannot do, do I still struggle? Yes. Of course. I struggle with all the same things that everyone else struggles with. But I think the, the, the difference might be the awareness around the things and how well I know myself and what I can and cannot tolerate. Very cool. Yeah. I think, you know, I've said this. I don't even know if I'm making any sense sometimes. No, absolutely. I, you know, I've said many times, I think, you know, trading is just a big game of self-awareness, right? It is. It absolutely is. And it's scary sometimes how much it is a game of self-awareness. And, and I mean, I think I've learned more about myself. In trading because of all the, the, the mindfulness that I've done and that I've already had learned about once I started to realize that and make that connection, you know, once I started to go, oh my God, you know, this isn't about what kind of strategy you trade. It's not about, it's not about anything other than your mindset. Really. It's like 90% of it. I find that amazing. I still find that amazing when I think about it. And, you know, it's, yeah, fantastic. I'm rereading Van Tharp's book called Super Trader. Have you ever read that one? No, not the Super Trader. I've read the other one. I forgot what it's called. It's good. And, and, and I think he probably says this and his other one too, but he says, you know, we're not, we're not trading the markets. We're trading our beliefs about the markets, which has to do with your strategy, has to do with your mindset, has to do with your risk management, has to do with everything. I mean, that, that is, it's about your beliefs about what you're trading. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes those beliefs go way, way, way back in our lives, you know, that they're not just beliefs that were created yesterday. They might be beliefs that you've, that you've had since you were a kid because of how you grew up or what your parents used to say to you or what, you know, anything and to make those connections and to see that how that is, how that is even relevant to you as a trader today. I think it's really powerful because it really changes things around in your head and in your mind. It's powerful and it's very difficult. Very difficult, really, really difficult. It's a tough process. And when your parents used to tell you, you know, money doesn't grow on trees and, you know, just all those little things that were pounded in your head as a kid, then, then you're like in trading, you're like, man, it can't be this easy. So you do things to make it hard, you know, I mean, just that's one example of just little things like that. Yeah. And then there's, and there's lots of stuff like that, you know, lots of stuff. And yeah, it's, it's sometimes you have to dig really, really, really deep in order to uncover those things. And I, you know, that's something I struggle with also. I mean, you know, it's like, it's, it's a really tough process. And I don't think it's accomplished in, you know, a year of trading. I think it's, you know, it's, it's a lifelong process of, and I know that a lot of these people in their books say that even very experienced traders have been trading for, you know, 30 years, still struggle with these types of things, still struggle with, there you go, struggle with the same type of stuff, you know? Yeah, for sure. I think it's just, the game becomes just a little bit different when you're aware that that is what's going on. If you're just like blindly doing this and you have no clue when you're sort of in the dark, then that, I think it feels very, very different. Well, when you start to become aware of how your beliefs might influence your trading and how all these things are so interconnected, you know, everything, you can see your personality in your trading. You can totally see, like, I look at people in the room and I can almost tell like who they are as a person, by the way they trade, I can, it's, it's amazing. Yeah, no doubt. Okay, so tell us a little bit about your, maybe, maybe your routine. You know, what, what is your, when you say mindfulness or your mindfulness practice, what does that mean to you? Like what do you, do you have a routine in the morning? Do you have a post after trading afternoon routine? Tell us, tell us what, what, what Bianca does for her mindfulness practice. Yeah, I'm, I'm big on, on routine. And I'm, I'm very much, I can't even, I can't trade without my routine. I have to have my routine. And that basically involves, you know, getting up. I have, I have a routine for all kinds of extraneous things because I have very variety of animals in, in the house that, you know, so there's a routine around all that, which is really irrelevant to trading. But, you know, then it comes to, you know, part of my routine and something that I think is really important and often neglected, I think by traders is our own health. So we sit, you know, all day long in front of a screen, depending on who you are as a person and how aware you are, there's, there can be a great tendency to get so absorbed in this. And then obviously this is a specific personality that you get so absorbed in something that you forget and neglect and anything else in your life. And health is usually the first thing that starts to get neglected, right? We don't hydrate properly. We don't sleep properly. We don't eat properly. Because what? It's like, oh, I don't have time to do all these things because I have to do all this other stuff, you know, I have to like do, watch all these videos and do all this like research and, you know, write my trading plan and do this and that, whatever, you know. So that aspect has always been really, really important to me because that has come through my life as a yoga instructor and a yogi, you know, health has always been really important. So that, that cannot be neglected. So that's really important. I have a routine for, you know, like hydrating in the morning, you know, I have like this little health drink that I make myself in the morning. And that has to happen. And there are no two ways about it. It doesn't get skipped. I don't care. This is not get skipped. Then there's, you know, the exercise in the morning. I like to exercise in the morning because I don't want to get out of the way and it makes me feel good. You know, I wake up and, and I'm energized, you know, I'm ready for, for the day. And I usually do a little sort, sort of mindfulness, meditation, routine, and 15 minutes or so. And that really sort of centers me in my day and, and, and what I'm about to do. And so that's the, that's sort of the morning, you know, the morning routine. And then, you know, obviously sleeping really well. All goes in the health department, you know, the health part of the routine. You know, I, I, I've learned a long time ago that I do not function if I don't sleep at least eight hours a day. You can just, I could just stop if I didn't sleep eight hours a day. I might as well not, not show up. And so that's really important to me. And then food, you know, food is, I think, one of the biggest things that is really important. So easy to just, you know, I, I stop myself too because, you know, I like all the snacks and, you know, there's a little bag of nuts over here, like a little, you know, what do you call it? The student photo in German. No, I don't know the English. I can't remember the English word. Anyways. So you're saying, eating donuts and cheeseburgers, that's not the recommended diet for a trader? No, no, not recommended diet for anyone, trader or not. But when you're, when you're, there's so much research on the effects of these types of foods on your brain function. I mean, it's amazing. There's so much research out there about that. And so, you know, there's something to it. It's not like, you know, people are just making this up out of thin air. You know, there really is a cognitive underperformance when you're on that kind of a diet. It's, there's no two ways about it. But the problem is that people can go away with it for a while. So they don't think it's really doing anything until it is. Because maybe they've never felt the difference. Maybe they've never felt the other side of that. Where, you know, maybe if you're, if you spend your whole life in like a minor brain fog, then you don't really know what it's like not to have brain fog. And sometimes that can be, you know, there can be a big difference. And yeah, so it's definitely, I always, you know, people, like sometimes yoga students, you know, like this is a good example where they go, oh yeah, but you know, I love these foods so much. You know, I'm like, yeah, but look, you're not doing well. What do you have to lose by trying? What do you have to lose? You have, you only have something to gain here. You don't have anything to lose by at least giving this a try. Try it for like a month. You know. Yeah. And that's, that's, you know, that's an important really, really, really, I think one of, one of the more important aspects of it. I actually do a whole other like brain hacking type of thing with supplements where I take very specific supplements that are known to enhance cognitive performance and things like that. So, you know, it's a whole thing. There's also a whole science behind that. I don't know if you've heard of the guy who holds the world record in memory. Like, I don't know how many thousands of things he can memorize as a string, like thousands. It's like mind-boggling. And he takes this particular supplement and he swears by it. He thinks it's like the cat's meow. And, you know, it's all about neutropics. It's called that whole field is called neutropics. Brain hacking, you know. It's an interesting, an interesting thing, an interesting field, for sure. Lots of different, lots of different substances we can take, legal substances we can take to enhance our brain function. Yeah, no doubt. Okay, so that's kind of your morning routine and you get into trading. Do you have anything specific from a mindfulness or routine standpoint with your trading or is your trading just kind of focused on that? No, there's a whole checklist in the morning, you know. And that's probably very similar to everyone else. You know, it's what Krish kind of posts this little thing every morning. It's like check the SPX, check the VIX, check where all the levels are re-gapping up, down, you know, make note of all that economic calendar, you know, update the OOTests, you know, fill in any sheets, anything I hadn't filled in the prior day, you know, all that kind of stuff, the typical sort of like pre-flight checklist, you know, pilot checklist, you know, press all the right buttons, flip all the correct levers and then you're ready for takeoff kind of thing. So, and one thing that I have to say, you know how all the books and the mindfulness teachers, they all recommend that we journal and that's something I really struggle with because I was the kid when I was little, you know, when every little girl had her little diary with the little lock on it, I was like, nope, cannot be bothered, do not want to write, want to have nothing to do with it. So I've never been sort of like a diary kind of person or a journal type person. So that's something that I really struggle with that's been really difficult for me and I think potentially the way around that for me is via voice recording where I can make those sort of like created a journal, a file of just like voice memos, you know, where I just talk. And that makes it a lot easier for someone who really doesn't like journaling and so that's one that's a great idea. You know, they talk about how when you write things down, it sticks in your brain, but also when you say it out loud. So that, you know, that kind of feeds into that same concept. Yeah. And it sure does. And for me, I think more so than writing it down saying out loud, saying it out loud makes a difference. And then, you know, after market, I do also probably what many people do, which is, you know, update my tracking, you know, my results for the day, you know, update anything that needs updating as far as tracking, upload my trades into my, you know, wingman, I use wingman. I know a lot of you guys use Trader Sync and and then I used to do I used to do a cold plunge like I had on my sheet, I had had the option to either meditation or cold plunge. And the cold plunge at some point. It's just got too much. I was like, I was going to say, if you give yourself any other option that you're choosing the other one, right? Exactly. So the cold plunge at some point, once it started to go to like, you know, into like the 30s here in the 40s, I was like, yeah, that's not happening. That's just too painful. It's hard to warm up all day, right? It takes too much mental effort, you know, to to overcome that that resistance. So I was like, no, that's not happening anymore. So but we recently got an infrared sauna. So and that does very similar things to the body. And it's a perfect way. It's almost like it's almost even better because there you can combine the meditation with the sauna because you can just meditate in the sauna. Are you saying you can't meditate in your cold plunge? No, that was not happening. It was like screaming bloody murder the whole time and just like you know, my mind was just on how much time do I have? When can I get out? You know, it was just unpleasant. So yeah, so that's a great thing. And I really look forward to doing that currently after market. I have an infrared sauna as well. And I was just thinking about this the other day that I haven't been in it for probably a year. I need to get back into that because you're right. It does have some I mean just some health benefits that have been studied. I'm sure you've read the Finland studies that everybody in Finland has a sauna and there's some pretty crazy statistics around. There are and in Germany, that was something that was, I mean that's that's the thing that people do in Germany, you know the the saunas are there are packed every day of the week. There are people there and people love it and you know it's not as common here as it is in Europe, I think and so yeah, great great health benefits. A lot of the same health benefits that cold plunges would have except for it's via the heat rather than the cold. So very cool. Yeah. Well, we'll end it there Bianca. Do you have is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners either about mindfulness or anything that you're doing that that you think would provide value to the listeners? Yeah, I mean one thing that I would like that I think is really important is to not to dismiss the value of the whole mindfulness health connection to trading because it's very it's very easy to do that. It's especially especially for younger traders you know who you know when you're young you're so like you just think you're invincible you know you think you're just like you got all figured out and you're invincible and that's it you know and so I think younger traders are much more likely to dismiss that connection because also it takes time and effort to research some of that stuff and start implementing that stuff and that time and effort takes away from other stuff that you could be doing and trading you know so I get it I get why it's so easy to dismiss that. Yeah, in addition to young people I think the other kind of I guess group of people that I've certainly seen more dismiss it is just you know more the math driven type people. This is about math. This isn't about this woo woo mindfulness stuff over here. This is logical math stuff. That's how their brain works. So yeah I've seen it from both young and that's a really good point and that definitely is true and also you know people who don't have a lot of experience with it you know they think it's just like they don't it's not like you know you decide to do a meditation or you decide to start doing mindfulness and like you know something immediately will flip you know all of a sudden like you're a different person it's a very long process and you kind of have to start enjoying that process and you and just even becoming observant of yourself and reflecting on how that process alone changes you and moves you forward is really interesting so one has to be open minded to it and that's not everyone's cup of tea but it should be in my opinion at least on some level I think you've inspired me just in this conversation to kind of reevaluate what I'm doing because I've gotten away from a lot of that you know it's and it's consistency right you can't just do it once a month you gotta do it every day you gotta do it you gotta do it and you know I always say like the most important thing in mindfulness and in any of those types of endeavors your yoga practice your your exercise is to just be kind to yourself you know don't have these outrageous expectations for yourself and then beat yourself up when you don't meet them because that's counterproductive too you have to find a way to be kind to yourself to allow yourself to fail and continue on recognize that you failed and move on and try again and that goes for an entirety of of you know routines and practices and process and all that stuff you know that we talked about before to the sort of micro time frame of a 15 minute meditation you know in the 15 minute meditation you might start to go wander off for like 10 minutes of that 15 minutes and but as soon as you start to realize it that's the first step forward and then not berate yourself and beat yourself up for not having been able to meditate perfectly for 15 minutes that's besides the point you know so you just recognize observe just it's like metacognition I think is what they're calling it it's like being able to observe yourself you know observe your thought your own thoughts your own process excellent well you know where I stand with mindset obviously the name of this podcast says it all so really appreciate you coming on here we love having you in the community love the conversation and we will continue to at one point we had a little mindfulness session going and I know I dropped the ball on that once a week after the market closed kids sports and I just didn't really have many available days after the market closed I would like to get that started at some point again but for those who don't know Bianca had that and it was really good some of the recordings are still out there would love to do that more but I think like Bianca said just taking a personal ownership around mindset and everything else when it comes to trading is a big deal great conversation Bianca thank you for your time thank you Steve for having me on you're welcome and see everyone in the next episode