I bought a small amount of Bitcoin and was given some a few years ago by a friend. It was all tucked in a Blockchain.com account. I had not accessed it for a long time, but I did yesterday as Bitcoin hit the all-time high. What seemed trivial a few years ago was now quite significant and would help a lot if we decided to buy a house. I wish I could take credit for the rise in value. I wish I could say that I was a wise and patient investor. The truth is that living in Nebraska, I could not liquidate my Bitcoin easily. Had I had an option to sell my Bitcoin, I am 99% sure that I would have done that 2-3 years ago when the price crashed and I would not have had anything left nowadays. I couldn’t have gone through a few years resisting the temptation to sell.

I made some good money selling a few stocks such as Costco, Axon, Netflix and Spotify. The problem is that all of these stocks soared after I sold them. While I felt good about making a profit, I felt much worse about missing out on winners. I am sure I will miss out on winners again. It’s inevitable. I just need to train myself to be more at peace with the fact that it happens to anyone, even the best of them. And I am far from being the best of them.

In 2022, I had all my earnings and 30% of my investment wiped out. Every day, I had to resist the temptation to sell and cut my losses. Every day, I had to muster mental strength to keep buying the index and a few stocks I believed in. It was a challenging time. Yet, I survived. Had I given in to that voice in my head, I would have lost far more. I wish I could say that I knew it would turn around. I didn’t. I treated that period as a learning phase. If I could turn it around, great. If not, I would experience first-hand how mentally challenging investing is.

Obviously, you need to understand your investment. At least you have a thesis of why you are buying something. Better yet, is there any insight that you have and others don’t? In some cases, that aspect of investing is already hard enough. Nonetheless, it’s far easier than the mental challenges. Are you patient enough? Are you brave enough? Are you willing to stick to what you want to do and watch others get richer than you?

Unfortunately, there is no podcast, no book, no blog or no expert that can prepare you for such challenges. You just have to experience them yourself. Economic cycles take time. So the longer you survive, the more experienced you are and the better you are as an investor.