The Art of Mental Training: A Guide to Performance Excellence by DC Gonzalez

Summary

Regular trading psychology books written by doctors and trainers focus too much on trading and ignored the fact that the ability to master our emotion requires practice and training. This book covers the topic with practical advices and techniques that the readers can use to train their minds properly. It is also a book with motivational stories to make you think and reflect upon your life experience.

Review

The Art of Mental Training: A Guide to Performance Excellence is a sport / martial art mental training guide. The author, DC Gonzalez, chooses to take the book in a different direction from conventional sport psychology books. Instead of focusing on dry theoretical stuff, he mixes stories about his personal experience in martial art training and his coaching experience with top atheletes into the book. It makes the book more fun to read while offering practical guide to normal people who do not have prior training in their thought process.

Traders often start out with no training. No proper training in the tools they use like how to read charts. The thought process, what happens in the mind, is the last thing these beginners would spend time thinking about. Yet, due to the extremely competitive nature in trading, it takes top performers to stay ahead in the game. And to become a top performer, mental training is actually more important than the other components.

This mental strength requirement makes it very difficult for people with little mental toughness preparation to excel in the trading business. They are just not ready mentally when adversities pile on at every twist and turn along the way in their trading careers. This is where this book can help.

For those who have experience in mental training, the materials presented is not new. Thus it would feel like it is just repackaging of other self-help books with a slightly different setting. This is not a fair assessment of the book because this book offers practical ideas that people can do in their everyday lives to transform themselves.

The part of the book with conversations between the author and his mentor “Leo-tai” feels cheesy. The funny thing is that it is often the case if you have first hand experience trained by an Asian martial art master in the old days.

I have recommended this book to a few college graduates. They found that no one ever tell them how to think before and this book offers something they find helpful in deal with stress at work.

This book is easy to read and enjoyable. I recommend this to everyone, not just traders.

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