Happy Thursday, traders. It’s Bryce here.

I hope you’re all excited about the upcoming fourth of July holiday weekend. The markets will close at 2pm Eastern tomorrow and remain closed all day on Monday. 

I thought this would be the perfect time to share some of my best tips for how to spend your time when you’re AWAY from the computer screen.

If you’ve decided it’s the right time for you to take a break from trading, that’s great. We all need a rest period from time to time. I certainly take them. 

But not all free time is created equally. The way you spend your free time can refresh your mind, body, and spirit, and make you a better trader when you’re back at the screen.

Let’s a look at the best ways to spend your free time to come back a more effective trader. 

My Top Three Tips for Getting Productive Rest

As a trader, you have to be mindful of the way you spend your time. In a way, you have to train like an athlete and keep your mind sharp.

Whether you’re in a positive or negative state of mind, it will affect your trades. You want to do things that will nourish you in your time off so you can come back to your trading screen with your game face on. 

Here are my top three suggestions for how to do that: 

#1 Be Creative and Constructive

Your free time is just as valuable as your work time. Don’t think of your time away from your screen as just a way to escape the stress. Find an activity that reinvigorates you. For me, nature has that effect. When I take a timeout in nature, I come back feeling like a new person. 

So when I was bummed about taking back-to-back losses recently, I decided to gather friends and plant a tree for every like I got on Twitter. Just the anticipation of sharing my love of nature with my friends rejuvenated me. 

#2 Be Grateful

The opportunity to trade is a rare and special thing. Not everybody gets to take a chance on their freedom and success the way that we do now. With low account minimums and no commission fees at many retail brokers, the barriers to entry are lower than ever. 

I often practice gratitude for wherever I’m at in my trading journey. Even after a loss, I remind myself that I’m lucky to even have had that money to lose in the first place. I also have the time and resources to keep educating myself on the markets. That’s an amazing thing! 

#3 Celebrate Your Efforts

I know millennials catch a lot of grief over celebrating our best efforts rather than our wins … but the truth is, it IS about the journey! Don’t get me wrong, veteran traders remember the first time they hit $100,000 in profits or their first $1,000,000. But after that … What makes you successful as a trader is knowing that your career is as much an art form as it is a technical science. 

Every chart is unique because it’s influenced by unique people and unique circumstances. And every trader’s journey is full of ups and downs — you need to accept both your wins and losses as part of the journey. Getting fixated on numerical goals can trip you up. So yeah, celebrate that you’re on the journey at different points along the way. Just because. 

Conclusion

It’s such a great time to be a trader. I feel incredibly lucky to be on this journey and to get to share it with you all. 

It’s wonderful to see how my trading account has grown over time, after TONS of studying and reading charts. But it’s even more wonderful to see how I’ve grown alongside it. Success in trading requires you to become a better version of yourself than when you started. 

I love that I get to be a part of that journey of self-discovery for newer traders in the Small Cap Rockets program. It feels like my trading journey’s come full circle and now, I get to share my best tips, strategies, stories, and practical advice with the next generation of traders — let’s take a trip to the moon together!