Welcome to another Nugget of Wisdom, a new weekly post I am sending out every Thursday. These are designed to be short and sweet, a quick read to (hopefully) impart some sort of wisdom, or at the very least to get you thinking about something interesting.
Comparison is truly the thief of joy. Yet, most of us can’t help but compare ourselves to those around us all the time. It’s human nature. This used to be not that big of a deal, as “those around us” was your family, your friends from school or work, perhaps your local church, and not much more. The problem in today’s day and age is that “those around us” includes virtually everyone on earth, thanks to the wondrous joys of the internet and social media.
Because of this, it’s very easy to convince yourself that your modest gains or results are sub-par when all you see are algorithmically fed wins. People naturally like to share their wins and hide their losses, so you are always comparing your entire trading history with only the very best results of others.
This can lead to you making all sorts of mistakes. In my experience the most harmful is when this mindset leads to you taking unnecessary risks in order to “win big”, because that’s what it seems like everyone around you is doing.
You stop being content with a 50% return on your investment, or a 200% return. You neglect to take profit. You want to 10x or 100x your money, and you want it to happen soon! Others did it, why not me?!
This is very very very dangerous thinking. It is also extremely common and prevalent throughout the entire crypto space; basically all of us feel this way from time to time. I know I do, no matter how good my results might be at any given time. Being aware of this is the first line of defense, but you will need to regularly remind yourself that the only person worth comparing yourself to, is yourself.
Try to be better and do better tomorrow than you did today. That’s it, that’s all that matters. It’s not always easy to do this but it’s worth always trying.
One last thing – you spend all this time comparing yourself to others, looking at the results of others, and thinking about what that means to you. Ultimately, you’re thinking about yourself.
Well, isn’t everyone else doing the same? (spoiler alert, they are). They’re thinking about themselves as well and feeling inadequate about their results when compared to someone-else-with-better-results-than-them.
Ultimately, they don’t actually care about your results; so you shouldn’t care about theirs.
Leave your ego at the door, or it will be the death of you.
I’ll be back with another Nugget of Wisdom next week! Also keep an eye out for next week’s premium issue, in it I will be talking about how I evaluate NFT projects from an investment perspective and sharing five projects I think are undervalued or at least worth looking at from a risk/reward perspective.