One of the great things about Hive, is that through engagement there is a near endless source of material to ponder and develop further into content. For me, this is massively valuable as it allows for a stream of conversation to be built online, where all participants are learning and fleshing-out their perspectives and ultimately, the way they approach their experiences, here and in real life.
On an earlier post on one of my favorite topics of 20 dollar HIVE, an interesting comment came in that made me think something I don't think I have thought about in this regard before:
Much like I replied, I wonder how many people here and in other aspects of life feel that something like building wealth is likely impossible, because they can't imagine themselves being in that situation. Much like 
It is a growth area for me too, as I try to imagine what it might be like, but it is far easier to imagine it not happening and being where I am now instead, because well, that is what my experience has been up until this point. But., if I can't imagine succeeding, what kind of impact is that going to have on my activity?
Another person on the same post brought up the infamous 10,000 Bitcoin sold for Pizza and it is kind of the same. If the seller imagines that the future value of that Bitcoin would be closing in on a billion dollars worth a bit over a decade later, would he have sold? Unlikely. But, it isn't just the uncertainty of the future that does this, it could also be that he couldn't imagine how something he essentially got for free could make him one of the richest people on earth - I mean, that is a pretty crazy leap to make, isn't it?
It is hard to imagine such extreme outcomes, so selling at the "lows" that seem like "highs" at the time feels like the right thing to do, especially if there are life needs to cover - like two-pizza type of hunger.
I wonder how many opportunities I haven't taken in my life, not because I didn't think the opportunity wouldn't succeed, but because I couldn't see myself benefiting from its success? Now that I think about it, probably quite a few. It is easy to excuse it all away as risk aversion, but with a little reflection, that "aversion" might be the reaction of an inability to imagine a good outcome too, so the brain justifies the decision as being "too risky" rather than identifying it correctly as low-self-esteem.
While it might be that we don't have confidence in our ability to succeed, but perhaps like Preparedwombat was saying, it might be more because we have so much experience of the inverse, we just can't see it as plausible for us. Yes, we can accept other people having the luck of the draw, but not ourselves.
There is an interesting conflict perhaps here though, as a lot of people enter the lottery with the "someone has to win it" attitude, but when it comes to investing into something that has the potential to create a similar return, that mindset doesn't hold. Perhaps there is a time consideration, where the lottery is an "immediate win" and the lottery numbers are right, or they are wrong.
In crypto though for example, there is no immediate win, which means investing in and having to wait years to see what numbers were drawn. Humans are incredibly bad at a few things, one being having a natural intuition for the power of compounding, and another being predicting how we are going to behave in the future under conditions that we have not yet experienced. Most people say something like, "If I was rich I would..." but the evidence suggests that *most people wouldn't and end up acting more on their defaults than their new-found potential - which is why so many lottery winners end up worse off in the future, as their wealth has changed, but their relationship with money has not.
This is something we should all consider, not because we are all likely to become wealthy, but because in a world where we have to continuously interact and negotiate with the economy, if we want to affect change in our lives, we have to understand where we are coming from so that we can hopefully make changes that lead us to better outcomes.
As said above, this is a "growth area" for me and likely for many, but I think that one of the things that has happened through interacting over the last five years in this community is, my paradigm is shifting from a scarcity mindset to one where I am a least not only letting in the possibility of abundance, but also the potential that indeed, I might be able to experience a little of it too. It hasn't been a comfortable journey and has also resulted in me changing almost everything in my life by way of how I visualize and interact with the world, but in doing so, rather than not being able to see myself as wealthy, I have been able to do the preparation, just incase it happens anyway.
I don't know how many people relate to this in some way, but for me, considering this has opened my own eyes to the realization that like nearly everything in my life thus far, the biggest hurdle in my way, is once again myself. Personal mindset matters a great deal to how we approach the world and if we can't even see ourselves in a better situation, what are the chances of us taking the steps to get there?
Hopefully, this brings something for you to think about too.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]