A friend would say "Buy this coin now coz it is going to pump in days or months to come" and without even thinking I would just rush to buy the coin- no research, no planning, no strategy, nothing at all.
I made a similar mistake. I was often ignoring crypto but in 2020 I realized that I was wrong. I think that my inexperience and immatureness played a huge role into it because when you grow up and you are in your teen ages, you can't really think that deep, you realize things when you grow up and reach your 20s, many things change from this point in life. I'm interested in what I would do if I was for example, 20 or 25 when Bitcoin was released but I'll never be able to find an answer to that question.
Sometimes I made profits from this coin no doubt but most of the times the coin would simply crash so badly that it returns me to square one. The losses were painful, but they taught me lessons I feel are worth sharing, especially with other beginners out there threading the same path.
Here are the lessons I learnt
1) Don't blindly trust signals, take your time to access and verify it.
2) Do your own research(DYOR), coz it gives you confidence and control.
3) FOMO and panic selling are dangerous. Rather be patient and disciplined.
4) And lastly, Don't Invest more than you can afford to loose.
I think that the 4th advice was a good advice in 2011-2017. Today Bitcoin's price is very high, the market cap is already saturated and by investing a small amount of money, you are going nowhere because a tiny profit won't do much to a tiny budget. Today there are many reasons to be confident and invest more than you can afford to lose. One of the reason is the fact that governments, states and companies are creating Bitcoin strategic reserves and they are investing into it.