Your crypto portfolio is flashing green and your hard-earned money is multiplying like crazy. You’ve HODLed through all the FUD and now your coins are mooning — that yellow 2018 lambo is nearly yours. Your heart is racing with excitement. All is good and nothing can stop you.
Ten minutes later you check again. Another thousand dollars up.
Twenty five minutes later: no change. What’s going on?
You grab a quick bite to eat and halfway through your sandwich you take a break from reading the latest news stories from CryptoPanic.com and you load up your blockfolio. Bull run still raging.
The day goes on and you realize that your mind is obsessed with crypto. Everything else is becoming less important. You’ve checked your portfolio immediately upon waking up and just before going to bed—sometimes twice because you’ve been rolling around in bed for 30 minutes.
Crypto is the future and the early adopters are getting serious benefits. It’s exciting to watch, but that rush is similar to the rush one feels while gambling and just as addictive. If you are not careful, your crypto obsession can start numbing other aspects of your life.
Here are my top three tips for avoiding or eliminating crypto addiction.
- Stop checking prices for pleasure or out of fear. Put a limit on how many times you check your crypto portfolio or any crypto price, unless you need to do research for trading. Try once a day or less. If this is difficult for you, if you feel the pull toward checking your portfolio, not that this is the addiction pulling at you and that this uncomfortable pull is what you are working to get rid of. For some, it won’t be easy.
- Stop fantasizing about crypto. Stop dreaming about how your coins are going to moon or wasting time feeling sorry for yourself over a bad trade or a missed opportunity. Get over it and enjoy the present.
- Appreciate the present. Enjoy life as it unfolds, whether it’s having your morning coffee, taking your children to school in your non-lambo, taking a shower. Forget all about crypto – and everything else — and just be present, soaking up that feeling of just being alive. Just for a moment, enjoy life without your mind.
David Ring III is the author of Unclog Your Happiness, a book about how the limiting nature of thoughts and what can be done to overcome these limitations.