Psychology, behaviour and reactions to certain situations have always been interesting to me. So often when we’re not immediately in a situation, it’s easy to say, “I’d have done it this way” when that’s probably not the case.
In the heat of the moment, all kinds of emotions take over as our ego wants to dictate play with the feelings of FOMO or FUD and it’s only later on, when the dust settles that we realise we’ve made a blunder.
For me, the blunder of jumping in to shitcoins when I should have just stuck with Bitcoin is so apparent now but I was acting irrationally and letting the ego side take over when my subconscious side was like, “What the actual f*** are you doing?” – well, assuming it can talk obviously.
After these events of high emotion, I often try to find ways of how I can do things better, improve and bolster my own mental game so that I’m better equipped next time.
Mind Games
The mental gymnastics we perform aren’t just related to Bitcoin though and we play mind games in all walks of life. For me, I’ve always been into playing racket sports and have always put myself under unnecessary pressure for what is essentially “just a hit”.
One of my friends recommended reading a book called the Inner Game of Tennis to help and as I was reading this, I could definitely relate to the two different mental sides of the ego and the subconscious side in relation to tennis.
However, the principles in this book extend so much further than just a few people running around on AstroTurf, hitting a ball for an hour.
They also apply to my learning journey with Bitcoin.
What the ego does is want to be the boss of you, which stops your natural learning from occurring and prevents you from bossing life.
The ego is a highly emotional part of the mind and is easily influenced by a lot of external factors, leading to irrational decisions in the heat of the moment.
Dangers Of Losing The Inner Game
Sadly, when we let mainstream media’s uneducated FUD, the opinions of salty nocoiners or worse, Shitcoin Snake Oil Salesmen, get in to our heads, it can lead to you questioning your conviction if you let it.
Suddenly, your own thoughts can be consumed in the frenzy, particularly during peak times of a bear market or bull market, and this causes you to make irrational decisions which you wouldn’t normally make.
That’s your ego dictating play as the anxieties, doubts and all the emotions those mainstream clickbait articles want you to feel, have an impact on decision making.
This is the danger zone because when you’re not in your right mind, it can spell disaster such as selling your Bitcoin due to fear that it “will go to 0″…
Keeping Ahead In The Game
The best way to keep ahead is to work out what it is that is causing the ego to come in and make irrational and poor decisions.
In the example we’ve talked about already, the obvious solution is to negate the impact of the FUD and nocoiner opinions by either ignoring them, not reading the articles, or simply blocking those shitcoin accounts.
This will drastically reduce or even completely eliminate your anxiety and negative mental energy, which frees up your own capacity to increase your learning.
It is highly likely that you have an interest in Bitcoin, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article! So by taming the beast that is the ego, it allows another beast to take full effect and that is your natural learning from curiosity.
When you bolster your learning about Bitcoin, it fills in the gaps that may have been exposed by the topics given in those pesky FUD articles and reduces your own anxiety.
The End Game
In fact, when you adopt this approach of continuously learning through your own natural curiosity, you start to see through every piece of BS FUD article, post, nocoiner and shitcoiner opinion.
You will also find that your own inner FUDster of the ego that was there, will die down completely and this subconscious side brings around more self-confidence about your knowledge of Bitcoin.
As we’ve talked about before, reading books, listening to podcasts and starting with your own learning (DYOR) are important steps, especially if you’re fed up with the current fiat money system.
Once you have a basic grasp of money, you can’t “un-see” the significance of Bitcoin and then you will just want to keep adding to your stack as much as you can.
When you get to this point, you will have played the inner game of Bitcoin… and won.
