Sometimes I wonder how we best stay motivated during slow times, or even during down times.
There's all kinds of motivational jibber-jabber out there when it comes to "reaching our goals" whether it's for saving, or reaching an income leve,l or just a particular point on the curve of whatever it is we define as "success."
What does it all amount to?
Regardless, I find it very difficult to stay positive when you just keep swimming in red ink, figuratively speaking.
I suppose one thing we can tell ourselves is that sometimes that red ink isn't anything we have control over.
For example, if you have a crypto portfolio during a bear market you can be diligently adding to the number of tokens every single day, but meanwhile you watch your total net worth decline a little bit week after week after week even though it seems like you're building week after week after week. Even if your number of tokens i UP by 50%, your equivalent net work is DOWN 20%... how do you feel "good" about that?
During bear markets, you inch forward a tiny bit every now and then and then it shouldn't seems like you suddenly take huge steps backwards; weeks of gains erased in minutes.
I'm not debating and denying the reality of this, I'm just getting back to the initial question I'm posing here how do you stay motivated? I find it's even harder with Hive because we're not really in that much of a bear market (with BTC testing new highs) but Hive's poking at year lows.
I've read various articles over the years that point out that the people who come out being the best during good times are the ones who kept working really hard during bad times. But how do we know that "bad times" are just a phase, rather than an indication the we're actually "circling the drain?"
What I am experience — feeling this desire to just pack it in and go and do something else for a while — is clearly something lots of people have felt over the years. My primary desire is to figure out a way to keep myself motivated but not to throw good money after bad.
Of course consistent wisdom throughout all this is that you should "buy low and sell high, right?"
Who's IN This Game? Who SHOULD Be?
That makes perfect sense! But the thing we have to remember in all this is that bad times are bad times. So when somebody comes up and asks us "well, why did you sell when things had been so bad for a while?" And you have to look at the sincere answer — rather then excuses and rationalizations —which is "I sold because it was the only way I was able to finance my car repair or pay my past due electricity bill or even buy food."
Which leads me to conclude that much of this "conventional wisdom" about buying low and selling high and keep on building when things are slow essentially only applies to people for whom investing is an activity in which they have lots of "headroom free cash" that isn't accounted for by their day-to-day living expenses.
So then we get one step closer to the question of whether or not people should even be pretending to be "investing" even small amounts if their primary concern is how to pay that car repair bill or looking at their past due electricity bill.
I had a very slow week with my savings plan last week because our primary vehicle broke down and we ended up having to pay $825 for repairs. $825 basically represents an entire year savings, if not more. You save up... and then it's all erased and you're right back to zero.
I suppose we can look at it and say it's a blessing that we had some money saved up at all, or we might be walking or riding bicycles for transportation now! Always look for the proverbial silver lining...
I suppose another piece of wisdom is *"well, you just gotta work harder!"
Harder than what? How do you "work harder" when you are already out of pulling the work harder card and have been for years? Regardless of how you work, days continue to have 24 hours in them there's no option to "upgrade" to a 32-hour day so you can regain lost ground!
Well just thinking out loud on a Monday... I guess there's nothing for it but nose back to the grindstone!
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Posted with proof of brain