How do we never regret a trade again when we lose money, miss a cryptocurrency pumping, and sell our Bitcoin or altcoins early on Coinbase, Bittrex, Bitstamp or Poloniex?
The trick is realizing that as long as we are playing any game in life, losing is certain and winning happens more often when we learn from our mistakes, which eliminates the need to regret them.
Will we see how to never regret a trade again because this is something we have complete control over?
If we are trading anything, cryptocurrencies or stocks, we will certainly lose trades no matter what we are doing, no matter how perfect our system is. If you give us a long enough time, if we make enough trades we will lose, and losing is guaranteed in the game of life if we are trying. We could argue that if we are not trying, like in dating if we are not even asking anyone out or trying to date, it's also losing.
In trading, we are guaranteed to make mistakes. We are guaranteed to take losses and I've taken some epic losses, which I will show right here. I've made some epic mistakes. I've lost unbelievable trades and yet I don't regret them today.
I'm here with you sharing how we don't ever have to regret a trade again and the key is that we don't need to avoid losing, what we need to do is go forward without regret. When we regret our trades then that sucks.
Some people have suggested that they couldn't live with themselves if they lost trades as bad as I've lost them. What I have is a life free of regrets today. I'm very grateful for where I am and that's critical, especially in cryptocurrency trading where there are so many huge opportunities that get missed, where there are so many trades that look like a winner at the time, and then seem like a big loser looking back on them.
Would you like to take a look at mine because this is an awesome example?
I'm the "sold my Dash masternode guy."
I bought 1,000 Dash and got a masternode for about $11,000 a year ago, it was in December 2016.
If we look back at the charts on Bittrex we can see that in December 2016 the price was around 0.04 or 0.03 for a Dash.
Now, at the time it was only about $1,000 for a Bitcoin.
So, I got a thousand Dash a year ago for $11,000, and then promoted it relentlessly. As the price continued to go up and up, we can see that the price spiked to 0.1 up here, meanwhile the Bitcoin price kept going up as well.
In April to May 2017, the price was $87 for one Dash. I had paid $11 per Dash and I sold at $87. I figured the price went way up, it looked like it was on a downtrend, I might as well sell and go into something better.
I didn't feel welcome in the Dash community. I felt attracted to go join another community, which is Steem.
Now, how could I have known in May 2017 that not only would the Dash price relative to Bitcoin go up almost 50%, but the Bitcoin price would go up 10 more times?
The price was already up eight times since I bought it and at the time it looked like a huge winner. When I made the trade it looked like buy at $11 and sell at $87.
Huge win, right?
Well, let's look at the Dash price today.
The price today is $984 for a Dash.
I bought at $11 and sold at $87.
That is a gigantic loss!
Now, of course, in a year Dash could be worthless or it could be worth ten times more and we could make a different judgment, and that's the key to never regretting losing or even winning a trade, but not winning big enough.
The weirdest thing is even if we win a trade, because almost anyone will argue buying at $11 and selling at $87 is winning, but if the price then went up to $980, we could argue really that's losing.
You sold out at $87, it went up to $980, that's like worse than having bought it high and sold it low, you might argue.
The key is I do not regret this transaction today because I have enough money. Yes, if I had held on to that Dash masternode I would have, with the payments, over a million dollars' worth of Dash today.
I started out buying a few $20, $50 or $100 a day of Bitcoin in 2015 and 2016. I had personal loans, I was over my head in debt, my business almost went bankrupt and I barely got together $11,000 to buy a Dash masternode. I sold that for $87,000 a few months later, and yes, that could theoretically be worth a million dollars today.
I am lucky to have any money at all in my position. I'm lucky to have a business at all. I'm lucky to be able to work from home. I'm very grateful for that. You see the key is when we start regretting all these losses it makes it hard to learn from them and appreciate everything that we have.
I don't go around every day thinking, "Man, I wish I hadn't sold that Dash masternode," because that's insane. It's like wishing I hadn't broken up with a girlfriend before, and then she's with someone new. It's over with. It's done. The question is, what do we learn from that?
I learned a very valuable lesson from selling my Dash masternode. I sold my thousand Dash before I fully realized all of the rewards from the work I did.
In farming terms, I planted a bunch of seed and as soon as a couple of sprouts came up, I yanked them out of the ground, ran off and said, "Look, I grew something."
I didn't sit there and fully cultivate the garden and take the full reward from it. I didn't yield the full harvest from all the crops.
I learned a very valuable lesson that helped me not do it again, because the problem is, a lot of us get stuck in these cycles where all we do is regret our losses, and our minds are wired that losses and negative things are more important than wins.
Most of us, if we are trading, we can win ten times and the one time we lose will mentally affect us more. So, yes, it's really attractive to try to learn systems to minimize losses because losses are potent, but that's not how life works.
Playing the game guarantees to lose. There's none of us that just go around and all I do is win, win and win, no matter what.
That's a lie!
No one wins no matter what.
Winners that we think of as winners lose and don't regret it. Winners go through losses and learn from those losses. Michael Jordan got dropped from one of his earlier basketball teams in high school or maybe it was College.
Now, can you imagine Michael Jordan, a basketball legend, got dropped from a basketball team?
If he had not learned from that cut, he would never have got to be an NBA legend. The same thing goes for us. We have to lose because losing teaches us our most valuable lessons.
Here's what I almost did again, I almost made the same mistake.
Now, I'm not saying that we won't make mistakes, but we don't have to regret the mistakes.
What I did, I got into Dash, promoted it for four or five months, and then sold it. Some would call that a pump and dump. I bought something, pumped it a bunch, then dumped it after it went up.
I almost did the same thing again with Steem. After about five or six months on Steem, I got a bunch of downvotes, a bunch of nasty and critical comments. The price went down. I was feeling real bad about my Steem investment, just like after a few months in the Dash community, all the same kinds of things happened.
This is called the dip.
In almost anything we are doing, if we are trading, everything might go well for a while, but then the whole market will go down. We will lose a bunch of trades all of a sudden. A dip will come in and that will test our faith, and when my faith got tested on Steem, I realized that I could sell out all my Steem and take a hundred thousand dollars out of my Steem, which was mostly in addition to that Dash masternode.
I was a guy who'd been almost broke a couple of years before, and all of a sudden could cash in on almost $200,000 of cryptocurrency profits in one year.
But I remembered, I sold my Dash masternode before I fully realized the profits and I got out of the community right when the community was testing my faith. The community was seeing if I was just there for my own self-interest or if I was there to do some real good and I pulled out confirming self-interest.
This mistake helped me not to do the same thing, to do something different with Steem, to stick with Steem when it got difficult. I was able to not make the same mistake again with Steem and guess what?
Now, I have 100,000 Steem today.
The Steem price just recently pumped up to $3.61. I bought most of all my Steem around a dollar and I put maybe ten, fifteen or twenty thousand into Steem from the Dash I sold.
I now have, and this is actually low on Steemit, but I now have over $350,000 worth of Steem today, even though I missed out on my Dash masternode.
I still had over $300,000 in holdings on the day I filmed the video for this and now over $500,000 today!
Isn't that enough?
Do I need a million dollars?
Isn't $350,000 or $500,000 enough?
Just two years ago, I had no retirement.
I had nothing.
I mean, maybe I had a couple of thousand or something in stocks, but practically I had no retirement.
I had no investments.
I had nothing, but debt before.
For the first time, I think today since I've been an adult, my family has more investments and money than debt.
That is a miracle!
That's why I don't need to and I choose not to regret things like selling my Dash masternode, because yes, sure, if I hadn't sold it I could have a million dollars today.
But I do have $360,000+ worth of Steem today.
Isn't that enough?
And sure, if Steem plummets and goes down to five cents and I lose everything in there, then you could look at it and say, “Well, you should have powered down and sold all your Steem before it went down.”
The thing is life throws wins and losses at us all the time. If we want to be happy, if we want to learn, if we want to grow, if we do want to win - win - win no matter what, if we don't ever want to lose a trade, the secret is we have got to go forward and every loss, every mistake is an opportunity to learn. It's an opportunity to grow. It’s an opportunity to not make the same mistake again, and when we get good at learning from our own mistakes, then we can learn from others.
In fact, you don't even have to sell your Dash masternode early, you can just look at what I did and not even have to make the same mistake once for yourself. That's when we get into a whole other level with it. What I hope I've shared in here is a very clear system to never regret losing a trade or any kind of thing in life that's similar to losing a trade because it sucks to live a life full of regrets.
I don't know anyone who lives a life full of regrets that I would want to live that life. I've had a lot of my life lived in regrets: one bad business decision, one bad relationship decision, one bad drinking decision after another, and today I don't have regrets because every mistake I've made is a valuable education.
The worst disaster I had in dating was my best teacher. I learned so much from that, that now I'm grateful I have the best relationship of my life, I have a family, I have an absolutely amazing life today that would be full of regrets if I chose to look at it that way.
Whether we have regrets or teachers in our past is a choice.
I do not regret, and I've said this with a straight face, I've looked straight into the camera and you can tell if I'm telling the truth: "I do not regret selling my Dash masternode for $87 when it's worth $980 today."
I choose to learn and grow from that. I choose to accept the past and use the past to educate what I do today, and I have a belief that what I have today is enough.
$360,000 worth of Steem or $288,000 according to this, which is a little out of date, that's enough today. I don't have to regret anything in the past when what I have is enough today.
Yes, $360,000 is not $980,000, that's true.
Is $360,000 enough?
Absolutely.
If all this disappeared overnight, would I still have a good enough life?
Absolutely, I would.
Someone would feed me and take care of me, and I would help others, one way or another.
Thank you very much for reading this post or watching the video below today because these are the huge lessons in life that are so helpful for enjoying our day-to-day existence.
I did regret selling my Dash for a little while, and thankfully I learned how to stop doing that.
I've shared that with you today.
If you found this helpful, would you please leave a like on the video below because that will help more of us find this and learn this incredible valuable lesson throughout all of our lives not just when it comes to cryptocurrency trading, but relationships, business decisions, where we live, our families, everything like that.
Thank you for reading.
I love you.
You are awesome and I hope you have a wonderful day today free from regrets.
Thank you for reading this blog post, which was originally filmed as the video below.
If you found this post helpful on Steem, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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