Theory of stretch zone as a tool for improving resilience

In this article, we will have a look at how you can improve your trading psychology by getting into your stretch zone. What is a stretch zone? Read more to find out!

What is emotional resilience

Emotional resilience is a skill that incorporates optimism, adjustability, rationality, and positive thinking and thus presents one of the key traits while trading.

It is the ability to accept circumstances as they are, to be realistic about the current situation and to be aware of all emotions and not letting them to affect our decision-making processes, especially the fast ones.

Resilience is something that everybody has and it is only up to us how much we will benefit from that.

But how can we improve our resilience? Resilience is built by stepping out of our comfort zone. However, it is crucial to take baby steps. As doing too much too fast has proven counterproductive in a majority of cases.

Thus there is a recommendation to get into the so-called stretch zone.

Stretch zone

The stretch zone is beyond the comfort zone, however still pretty close to it. It is a zone where we are still learning, growing and improving our skills calmly, without a fear.

The stretch zone is an area of very little steps where even though we are still pretty safe, we are already growing.

We have to switch on to successfully operate or to perform in this area. It creates a gap between our current ability and the ability required in order to be successful.

This gap transforms our brains and the whole body physiologically and neurologically, which enables us to successfully complete the tasks.

Then our comfort zone expands and what was initially the stretched zone will become part of it.

Be aware of staying in the stretch zone because when you will cross the border you can appear in the so-called panic zone.

That is the zone of doing big jumps instead of taking baby steps.

When we are in this zone we experience the feeling of not having a clue.

It is just way too much for us.

This put bodies full of cortisol, adrenaline and because of that it is too overwhelming and thus no learning occurs.

Therefore it is really important to get that sort of smaller steps we take in order to improve – and then we can progress our resilience to deal with sort of more stretch increases.

The foundation is also to have the right goal, which is clear, meaningful and beneficial for us.

If we have right goals, we are sincerely motivated towards achieving them while on the other hand when our goal is not right for us, it is very difficult to find ourselves motivated, and we are easily distracted and struggling with our resilience all the time. This does not mean that we are lacking resilience, we are just chasing the wrong goal.

Do you feel stressed? Anxious? Controlled by your emotions?

Take a step back. Breathe. Meditate. Write a journey.

Set your short-term and long-term goals. Work on your resilence. Work on yourself but remember – stay in a stretch zone.