Every trader gets stuck at one time or another. Doesn’t matter the level of skill attained – no one is immune.

Contrary to what you might believe, professionals don’t knuckle down and “power through” either. They do just the opposite: they back off.

Sometimes you have to surrender the day to win the week, or surrender the week for the month, the month for the year. Obviously, I’m speaking about perspective.

In yoga, it’s possible to be able to do a pose one day but not the next. It’s baffling, but try to go too deep on a hamstring stretch and you’ll be out of action for quite a while. You have to back off and say “not today.”

This is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength – for a few reasons. One, your competition may not have this skill and sadly and grind themselves into lower returns because they get too invested in doing things their way, not on the market’s terms.

The second is, you preserve your sanity and a great deal of brain cells by backing off. If you plan on trading as a career or for many years, what does a month mean? Not much.

In order to get unstuck, read fiction, go to the museum, take a new language class, or learn to play the banjo. Do something disruptive to your spirit that has nothing to do with trading. You’ll eventually find out that it has everything to do with trading…

In each of these cases, you also preserve your equity – which is the first order of business. After many years you’ll come to know, as I know, that the best traders are the ones who play superior defense.