It took a long walk to break the bitcoin distraction and start to see sense. I think we should be wise about the technology we let into our heads. Especially when that technology is tied to money. I have 6 bank/share apps on my phone I check frequently. This may be my next area to tackle.
One more reason to HODL. Buy some bitcoins, forget that they exist, check the situation 10 years later... either bitcoin doesn't exist anymore (more likely), or you are a millionaire (less likely, but the chances are better than in lottery).
My colleagues are watching bitcoin prices all the time... most of them don't even own any! I bought some, and they were like "hey, did you notice the price went up, are you happy?" or "hey, did you notice the price went down, are you sad?" every day. I told them "guys, please do not talk to me about bitcoins; I am going to check their price in 2030, and until then, I don't care".
I have an approximate idea of where the bitcoin is now, because seeing the headlines on HN, it is hard to avoid the information. But I don't know what happened yesterday, or during the last week. I could check the current price in 5 seconds... but I won't, because emotionally I just don't care. Instead I will submit this comment, and then try to forget that bitcoin exists.
(And this is not specific to bitcoins; I would do exactly the same thing with gold or stock market. Unless active trading is my job, which it is not, I do not need the daily numbers.)
I wonder why this is so emotionally easy for me, and many other people seemingly can't do it. It's not like I don't need money. I don't even feel particularly stoic. It is suspiciously similar to learned helplessness. Maybe I just focus my attention elsewhere... like writing comments on HN.
I love this comment. It shows how different people's brains are wired as you say. For me bitcoin is like the story of the princess and the pea. I know it's a tiny thing but I can't get it out of my head.
I have shares I live with quite easily. Shares seem as close to me as I can get to actually having a connection with a product. I think I struggle morally to persue money for moneys sake. That's not a judgement on bitcoin owners. I just know for me I don't give two hoots about bitcoin and that somehow is important to me. I don't do the lottery either as I decided some time ago not to dream of what may be. This is a quick way to lose a sense of gratefulness for what you have.
Anyway, from the over sensitive to the emotionless, good luck with your coin :-)
What sent me down that rabbit hole in a big way was stoic philosophy. I’m not 100% on board with it, but when it comes to this it has literally changed my life. I now take an active role in how I perceive things and how I react to those perceptions, and I actually enjoy that exercise a lot.
So you lost some money. Can you still eat? Pay rent? Still have a job? Then it’s not a problem at all, is it?
Not long ago I would have gotten worked up too, and maybe I still would. Who knows. But there really isn’t any need for it.
After being told (of his exile), “Your case is being tried in the Senate,” Agrippinus responded:
“Good luck betide! But it is the fifth hour now” (he was in the habit of taking his exercise and then a cold bath at that hour); “let us be off and take our exercise.”
After he had finished his exercise someone came and told him, “You have been condemned.”
“To exile,” says he, “or to death?”
To exile.
“What about my property?”
It has not been confiscated.
“Well then, let us go to Aricia and take our lunch there.”
I don't think breaks ups are something you can fully mitigate the bad feelings of - relationships are about all that matter in life, whether with friends or lovers or family. So I wouldn't expect myself to feel better over night or repress feelings of sadness or loss, or beat myself up for giving in to bad feelings occasionally. You're human and you have feelings. The only thing you have any control over is how you evaluate and react to those feelings. The feelings don't define you, but your actions do.
Here are some key things I'd try to remind myself of though:
- Loss of relationships is guaranteed in life. Every day we should be cognizant of that. The people we love are going to be gone one day, by choice or otherwise. If we can reasonably expect to lose everyone, including ourselves, we should learn to be grateful for the time we have and avoid taking away from that by dwelling on what we can't control. We can aim to extend relationships by keeping up our health and investing in meaningful relations, but beyond that, what we have is fortune while what we lose is often inescapable. You may have many breakups in your life. More interestingly though, you may have many loves. That's much better to focus on. How do you get there, instead of dwelling on what was lost?
- Love fluctuates dramatically, even in most successful relationships. Even if no one was at fault (you did nothing wrong, the person you broke up with did nothing wrong), it's entirely natural for people to change over time. This is a good thing, even if it feels bad at times. If your relationship didn't have what it took to endure then put your energy into figuring out why and what could be done to make the next one more resilient. Good relationships require a lot of honesty and growth, and this is a great opportunity to practice honesty with yourself and use what you learn to develop your understanding of yourself and your relationships.
- What you've lost is, generally speaking, likely to come back. If love tends to be transient in our lives, especially for the earlier portion of our lives, we should regard individual relationships specially (because relationships really are special) but avoid trapping ourselves with the notion that a single relationships is integral to our being. These relationships will come and go. We can build strong and meaningful relations with countless people, even outside of romantic relationships. Hold all relationships highly, but don't let one rule over you. It was never going to last forever, right?
- On that note, the best relationships in life can't easily be "broken up", so to speak. They don't need an element of romance to be fulfilling or rewarding. Maybe this can be a reminder to seek out or focus on friendships which have endured and continue to deserve attention and energy. True friendship is exceedingly rare in many peoples lives and worth all the energy you put into it.
- Finally, something I try to remind myself often is to be at ease with being alone. I have a family but there was a long time when I didn't, and the best thing I practised was to be happy with being alone. Of course there are times when you simply won't like being alone - you want to be around someone, you want intimacy, you want to be loved or to love someone. That's fine. The key is to allow those feelings to occur and pass through as you refocus and realign your attention to the things you can control and improve. Take action on those things and benefit from enriching your life so future you can bounce back from this stumble.
This is exactly what you need to do in order to recover what you lost in the first place.
Some key things I found helpful were:
- Asking myself why I was lonely. What was it in my mind telling me I needed to be with someone? Was it something meaningful, or something egotistical? Was it boredom? Was it curable through spending time with friends instead of seeking a partner? Over time I've found the feeling varies, the cause varies, and it's important to pin-point it.
- Focusing on what's important in my life. There are a lot of rewarding things in life beyond a romantic relationship. Many of these things are immediately accessible. For me it's woodworking, playing guitar, or free diving. And of course friends as mentioned. This is made a lot tougher due to the pandemic of course, but you almost certainly have things in your life that are rewarding and deserving of your attention.
- Making sure I take care of myself and don't allow feeling bad about a lost relationship (or anything else) to turn into a downward spiral. Continue exercising, continue reading, talking to friends and family - once you allow negative thoughts and feelings to affect your routine and self care, you risk compounding negativity until you no longer act rationally and are overwhelmed by inadvertent self-loathing. These bad feelings can become you, and nipping that at the bud is genuinely very important.
Anyway, I'm rambling - I hope you're okay and that some of this resonates to some degree. These things are extremely personal and everyone will handle it slightly differently. What's useful to one person is useless to another. Regardless, if you're feeling down, hang in there and remember that this too will pass.
I get the same feelings as you do (we all do). I read that if the price goes up, we get an elated feeling but it's minor. But when we lose money, that negative feeling is twice as strong.
1) Long term investements which I almost never look at. Regular scheduled deposits going into an index fund.
2) Bets. Fun little side gambles which I always do for one purpose - aquiring something in the real world. Example: I want a new M1 macbook, but rather than drop $1k, I gamble $3k bitcoin. If it makes enough profit for the macbook, I sell immediately, and buy. If it drops, I just hang onto it until it goes up. But ultimately, this category of investment is never anything other than a bet, which I am OK losing. And, it's always a means to and end. I have a product in mind, and I justify gambling some money (which is fun) as a means to acquiring said product.
This is the most important concept of investing. You should never place an amount you wouldn’t be ok losing. If losing every cent of an investment could cause financial ruin, you’re investing too much.
I am not OK with losing the money I have invested, but it is so unlikely that I do not need to worry about it.
A situation where the global stock market crashes, and never recovers, is basically an apocalypse. That is not worth planning for.
This is all a big gamble with different risks. But generally: if you have “money” you have a risk to lose it.
I use here ““Money”” as a synonym for buying power, or value that can be exchanged. So it is not like Money because it dose not describe the meta value and is part of the big gamble ;)
Everybody is angry to see $crypto reaching 300% but when it dips back half, nobody wants it anymore, until it grows again. Trading flips our natural reflexes upside down.
The guru/superstition aspect is also something rare.. the actual knowledge of traders is really thin, but it can sound sophisticated if not advanced for the average crowd. Paired with the fact that all that is said comes with a "work 70% of the time" there's always enough room to justify errors and failures and still look like a guru to your crowd of wannabee-rich.
That said it's also a good tool to learn about calculated risk, adventurous and also balance (many start glue to their screens but with time you know how to not overspend your time like this).
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com//mobile/view/1...
http://www.1netcentral.com/articles/the-snake-rope-essential...
Your time horizon is set at 10 years so any gains or loss is just a paper loss.
If you need to check just do it once per day to get a idea if the market. But not in the morning because if your port is big enough it might affect your day. Try for lunch time to not affect your sleep.
Good luck!
Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened.
I sold some stocks for a modest profit, checked a few days later, and read that if I had just held a little longer then my profit would have been like double. It was very frustrating, and there was that negative emotional reaction. Then I realized I'd somehow misread the numbers, and in fact I would have had my initial investment cut in half. My frustration melted into relief and happiness. But more than that, it shocked me into realizing something very important: in the moment, my emotions seemed real, but were actually completely disconnected from reality. Further, the sense of "control" I thought I had was revealed to be a complete illusion.
After that, these "bets" (gambles) have completely stopped affecting me, and I haven't experienced FOMO since.
Hope more people have the same liberating realization!