You need balance in your day trading just as you need balance in your life to be successful over the long term. Self image, self confidence, and self reliance all come from balance in your trading and in your life. Balance allows you time to prepare for each day’s day trading. Balance allows you to live with triumph and disaster and, to quote Kipling in his poem, If, “treat these two imposters just the same.”

The life of the day trader is prone to ups and downs. It is important to maintain a sense of balance so that depression, on one hand, and euphoria, on the other, do not drive us to irrational day trading decisions. Sticking with the day trading plan is much easier when our self image is of an independent person who has several important things in their life of which one is day trading.

Balance in day trading and in life leads to rational decisions instead of hurried snap judgments. Balance means spending time in preparation and review as well as time executing trades. Our self confidence grows when we are prepared for the day and succeed at a few trades instead of jumping into the day trading markets unprepared and playing catch up.

Not every day is given to great opportunity but opportunities await the trader with a trading plan and a balanced life. Although you need to do your homework to be a successful trader you do not need to work every hour of every day. Perspective and balance in your life, and in your trading, are lost when your focus is constantly too close to your work. When your trading becomes all consuming it first nudges other things out of your life and later demands the entire stage.

When we doubt ourselves we may hide at the day trading station, our one and only friend. Self reliance, self confidence, and our self image grow when we balance out our lives and feed our souls a little. Scheduled time away from the trading station gives us perspective when we return. Sometimes when we take our eyes off the screen we see real life opportunities that we can turn into successful day trades too.

In If Kipling talks about “[filling] the unforgiving minute [w]ith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run” but he does not specify that all effort takes place sitting on a chair in front of a computer screen. The point of day trading is to improve your life, not take it away. There is an enhancement of self image, self confidence, and self reliance when one broadens one’s horizons and lives with a sense of balance.

A famous fund manager once told the story of being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the mall one weekend by his wife and two teenaged girls. He acquiesced out of a sense of familial obligation. Then he saw droves of teenaged girls mobbing a new store, The Gap, in search of brightly colored sweaters. His subsequent purchase of stock in Gap provided excellent returns for his fund when the stock ran up significantly. Sometimes, with a little balance in our lives, we see things beyond the limits of the day trading screen. Maybe part of your balanced life and trading plan should include a trip to the mall each weekend.

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