Quote from: KeyJockey on December 11, 2017, 04:12:18 PM

Hey Guys... "philosophical" question for today, LOL - hope it's still enough 'speculation' related not to get deleted off topic Tongue

What's the best way you guys have all found for yourselves to deal with the psychological trap of "what-if-itis" disease, or "If-Only-Ism" thinking patterns?

For lack of a better term, this is the phenomenon of looking BACKWARDS too much at whatever number/quantity or type of other crypto coins that you may have USED TO HAVE, but for whatever reason you DON'T HAVE any more... and now after they've mooned, and you're kicking yourself saying, "Oh man if only I'd not sold or lost or given away XXX of my YYY" etc etc etc.

I'm SURE we all have this disease to some degree or another. Seems impossible to me that *anyone* involved in crypto at all for any middle to long-term length of time could EVER totally avoid it, right? Nobody ever gets all the decisions correct 100% of the time.

Overall I'm still way, WAY ahead of where I'd have been, financially in my life, from getting into bitcoin at first over 4 years ago now. Compared to having just left the money sitting in a bank CD deposit, there's no question it's a huge WIN overall.

But IF ("if only!" LOL) during those 4 years I'd have just HODL'ed more, not traded much (or at all), kept more of certain coins and less of others... I can't shake the thinking that I'd be even *further* ahead today. Like, pushing on upwards of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars further ahead... Cry

I ain't complaining, really... most times when you catch me in the correct frame of mind I'm happy to be where things are. Life is good, overall... no problemo.

But... ya know... goddammnit... sometimes that fucking "what-if-itis" or "If-Only-Ism" disease just *creeps* back into my brain. It's annoying LOL

So what do you guys do when it comes? Any quick tips mental gymnastics to banish the demon shadow there? LOL

That's a tough one. I did that a lot with Google, in which I never invested. Same with Apple. And of course I do it from time to time with crypto, but in this case it's more like "why didn't I buy more?"

For me it comes down to realizing that I made the best decision at the time with the information that I had, and sometimes that turns out to have been a good decision and sometimes it turns out to have been a bad decision. My lesson learned is that I should get more information before making decisions like these, which is tough because there is so much bad information out there, and I should find more people who consistently make better decisions and emulate them.

There are a few people here whose comments and advice I take seriously since they have an established, verifiable track record. I'm pretty sure you know who those people are also since you've been around awhile and have noted their accuracy rate too. So, I lean on my own research first, and if what they say agrees, then I'm pretty confident. If what they say disagrees with my research, it makes me pause and ponder why we have different conclusions. Either way, at the end I'm the one who has to make the decision, and as long as I can assure myself that I did my due diligence, I find it a lot easier to live with those decisions, right or wrong.