One of the most important elements to trading successfully is psychology. It’s no secret and yet it is one of the toughest hurdles we all face. It goes far beyond the “hope, fear, and greed” we see driving markets. Our own personal psychology and in return our market performance is effected by our health, well-being, sleep, organization (or lack thereof), and an assortment of other personal elements that have nothing to do with the market…but everything to do with our PERFORMANCE within the market. How can we manage these externalities that can dramatically hinder our success in the market?
In steps Beth Marconi, founder of LEVItrade. Her expertise isn’t to tell you how or what to trade (though she is an excellent trader). Her job is to help you get all of the other obstacles preventing you from being successful in the market out of your way. IF we can get them out of our way, we’re more than half way down the road to success!
I recently wrote an article about my own personal turnaround story. Beth and LEVItrade were a HUGE part of that turnaround. In brief, about 6 months after my daughter was born, I had a major dilemma… WAY too many good things happening at once, a difficulty saying no, and my priorities being out of whack. As a result, my health and well-being began to deteriorate. I put on weight. The most exercise I was getting was walking to and from the office. I was eating mostly garbage…typically a cinnamon bun and large coffee to start the morning, followed up with a burger or pizza and a soda for lunch, some form of chocolate as a snack, a reasonably healthy dinner but with beer/wine and then an ice-cream for desert. After a few months of this I started to feel lethargic and started getting sick. For the past 36 years I was someone who was hardly ever sick and have the perfect attendance awards to back it up. I was stressed and was hardly getting any sleep. Things were bad. I knew that if I didn’t start making changes in my life and soon, I was headed down a very dangerous path.
So very fortunately and serendipitously, in steps Beth, a long time follower of ChartYourTrade. She reached out to me with a new business she was creating called LEVItrade. The idea of her program is that in order to trade well and achieve peak performance, all other aspects of your life should be in harmony. It’s tough to focus on the markets and trade well when you’re sick, depressed, sluggish, and/or generally out of sorts. Her program is designed to help flesh out the root causes of many of the problems we’re facing and develop plans on how to tackle them one at a time. Her program requires work but she is with you every step of the way. As I embarked on a 6 week program that was personal with a lot of self reflection, I was forced to identify and confront my demons head on, and take steps from all angles to defeat them and not let them come back. Beth and I were in constant contact throughout her program. We’d develop plans and would email each other daily (sometimes more frequent as I had questions throughout) and we had bi-weekly hour long phone calls.
The hand holding throughout the program did not stop at the program’s conclusion. Beth is still readily available as she is with all of her clients. If I need to reach out to her or bounce ideas, she’s just an email away and is extremely responsive. If you are experiencing anything similar to what I went through or are having difficulty climbing over your own hurdles, contact Beth Marconi from LEVItrade at beth@levitrade.com
Inside the LEVItrade program
The program starts with a long questionnaire with many open ended questions you need to fill out. This questionnaire will have you identifying many of your hurdles or demons. The questions are broken down into Body (Diet, Exercise, Sleep) , Mind (Mental Well-being, Vocation, Hobbies, Education), Spirit (Lifestyle, Environment, Vision). I tried to be as thorough as possible with this initial task and spent about an hour completing it.
After sending the questionnaire back to Beth she responded quickly with some things that caught her attention right off the bat and the Q&A between us began. Within a couple of days she provided a full analysis of what she perceived my key challenges were and areas we should focus on. We scheduled our first call to review this analysis in depth.
Beth is a great listener and her LEVItrade program has a great deal of flexibility. As our first call unfolded it had become clear to her that our focus should shift from initially attempting to tackle diet and exercise, toward trying to de-clutter and organize my mind. I already had an idea of what a healthy lifestyle looked like. It was getting there through my competing priorities that was the problem. Beth heard what I was saying and extracted that. She knew that once we were able to get that first domino fall, the others were likely to follow. It was only our first week and our first phone call and already we were making strides!
As we began on developing strategies to organize and prioritize, Beth also encouraged me to incorporate more exercise into my week and provided helpful suggestions on how to get to the minimum of 3 days. Sleep wasn’t much of an option for me since my daughter had just began teething. However, we were able to make peace with the lack of sleep since the sacrifice was for something worthwhile.
The Mind and Spirit portion of the program went hand in hand, at least for me. As noted, with so much going on in my life at the time (a new baby girl, family, full-time day job, part-time trading, running ChartYourTrade which had become a 2nd full-time job, and keeping up with the Meetups and other trading circles) my mind was cluttered and I was struggling mightily to keep up with it all. Beth quickly developed a way for me to organize and prioritize all that I had to get done AND helped me realize that diet and exercise (an afterthought for me for quite a while) had to be at the top of the list. With so many other things going on, diet and exercise are easily neglected but they are absolutely essential to maintain such a demanding lifestyle. Think of it as a high performance sports car. You wouldn’t expect to get top performance out of a a Ferrari by pouring sugar in the gas tank, would you? Why would you expect any different from treating your body that way? Well, it took a lot for me to finally get that into my head and Beth was the final driver of that point for me.
Step by step we worked through each of the problems I was facing and as we made progress, we tackled the next problem while making sure I was sticking with the plan for the ones we’ve already overcome. At the end of the program, I was given a Roadmap to Success. I had already found success with Beth and LEVItrade but this was to keep me on the path and show me the way in case I got lost. If I did get lost, Beth remains only a phone call or an email away. Its part of the service and she offers it to all.
Elevate Your Game with LEVItrade
Needless to say I HIGHLY recommend LEVItrade. If you have gone through anything remotely like what I experienced, contact Beth at beth@levitrade.com. You’ll be glad you did.
