If you Can't HODL, You won't be rich.

1. If you Can't HODL, You won't be rich - [@cz_binance]

Did you know that Changpeng Zhao(CZ), the CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, sold his home and bought everything in Bitcoin, when the BTC was still trading around $30.

I always respect people who take risks.

I couldn't HODL Steem and I will share my personal story explaining the reasons in another post. In this post, I will share why I couldn't HODL my 40K HP. Looking back I have no regrets and deep down I know I'm getting better with HODL mentality and getting better at maintaining consistency. I sold all my Steem and I HOLDed 25% Hive that's an improvement. I took 10 months break from Steem and 4 months break from Hive and that's an improvement with sustaining my accumulation.

If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes.

I can be proud of the things that I did during my Steem time and now with Hive. Most of the time we cant measure wealth only in financial terms. I guess most important thing is to remember the lessons learned.

I'm NOT good at telling a story in writing. However, I would like to share some of my personal stories about why I had to sell 75% Hive HODLed with my last power down. I came back to Hive in June last year after a 10 months break from our Steem/Hive community. I was living in Japan with my wife and son when decided to take a break from steem. Taking a break from Steem was one of the hardest decisions to make in my life. I just couldn't openly communicate with our community and explain the reasons why I'm taking a break. My wife had no idea what I was going through and I had no idea I could get out of the situation that I was in. However, I had faith that I will bounce back. After the first few weeks of not knowing what to do, I decided to move back to London by myself, a place I knew very well and London was my home for almost 20 years. I started my new life chapter in London with almost $25k debt. Asked my friends and family for some help and fortunately, no one really helped as I kept most things inside me. Even though I had some relatives who lived in the UK, I didn't want to stay with them and because I had to obey their rules or at least satisfy some of their expectations. So I was living at $12-20 hostels while working at two minimum wage jobs and I hardly spent money on anything living extremely frugally. The only expense was my accommodation cost. And I want even extreme and started to sleep on the streets, so I could save a little more money. So 2 jobs and sleeping in the streets continued few weeks. As more income start to flow into my life, I challenged myself to go back to co-corporate world and start applying for jobs. Within the first week of applying using LinkedIn, I got offered a job paying £40K per annum. I'm happy with getting an offer with my first interview. What I was most excited about is that person who hired me was the co-founder of SkyScanner and my opportunity to learn from him was the major factor that I stopped applying for any other jobs.

It was December 2019 and I had one year plan to pay off my debt and repair our relationship and live together with the family in the UK. I took baby steps to reinvent myself and create a brand new me. 3 months later, Covid hit the world and I lost the Job. My company failed to look after me and they couldn't even arrange the furlough payment that was offered by the British government. I must admit I was blaming my employer and the government initially but I actually took covid as an opportunity for me to get back with Crypto and Hive. So I started making new plans to pay off my debt and reunite with my family. One of my old friends from Denmark reach out to me and we're having some conversations about covid and life. We had multiple phone conversations on the phone to discuss my moving to Denmark temporarily during the lockdown and that make it easier for me to live with my family immediately. So I didn't think too much and pack my 21 items. Thanks to a minimalist lifestyle, I was the ability to move to Denmark without any delay with only 21 material possessions.

Sorry, this story is getting longer than I imagined.

After living with my friend's house in Denmark for 2 months, I helped him renovate his house and planned to bring my wife and son to Denmark. Me and friend couldn't get on really well and every single day I thought about getting back into Crypto and I couldn't do it while living at my friend's place. So one thing was clear that I wanted to get back into crypto. So I moved back to London again.

These are days when the world was in lockdown. I struggled a make any decisions on reuniting with my family. However, I decided that I'm going to start with Hive again. Almost a year past and so much had happened. The two main problems stayed unsolved. Debt and relationship. Our relationship problems got much bigger and me and partner were so close to getting a divorce. So I took a small break from Hive in June this year. I had 40K Hive staked that time and I knew I could sell my Hive and pay off my debt. I learned that my debt problem can be fixed easily but my repairing our relationship is a slow process.

During my Hive break, I worked at 3 jobs and repaired (improved) my relationship with my wife. I choose to be Homeless for a few weeks during this break. I could say these three months probably have taught me extremely valuable lessons. I discover more about myself. I probably have to write a separate post titled "what I learned being Homeless".

A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought - they must be earned.

Even though the first 4 years of crypto didn't bring much financial return, I certainly feel that I cultivated a calm mind. I guess only calm minded people can HODL and make good judgements.

Now I can happily end this post saying that I couldn't HODL 40K Hive but I could HODL our family together.