Crypto & NFTs are my only hope.

[7thLetter]

This is a post for me to be brutally honest with myself.

I'm 26 and I feel like I'm pissing my life away. People might say "Oh you're 26 you're still young", but I honestly do feel like I'm running out of time.

Career-wise, I don't have a lot going for me. I've been jumping from job to job in the restaurant industry working in the back & front of house. I've been thinking of switching it up and doing landscaping or some type of general labor work. I also got certified to become a personal trainer 6-7 years ago but I never pursued a career in that field. I may look into getting into that now though.

In my early 20s and even at 18 & 19 years old I always thought I was going to be rich by 25. I've always chased different side hustles like flipping, pyramid schemes, blogging, Youtube, dropshipping, Amazon FBA, etc. But they never really worked out for me because I half-assed everything. While I was acting like I was doing productive shit, I wasn't putting in enough effort.

Now I'm lost, and I've been lost. My only plan is to continue to slave away and put that money into crypto & NFTs with hopes of it potentially changing my life in the near-future. I have most of my savings in crypto and I took on some debt for NFTs.

I have a lot of good habits in place in other areas of my life, thinking that they'll help change my financial situation but to be brutally honest it doesn't change much. You can get your health and body in shape but that won't exactly do anything for your finances or productivity. You can work on building your discipline through ice baths or training hard at the gym or doing MMA, etc. But when are you going to work on your side hustle or business?

I work on a few side hustles right now but still I'm sort of not putting in enough effort into them.

Any advice?

Edited January 28, 2022 by 7thLetter

[7thLetter]

I feel like Leo is talking to me in this video

 

[Leo Gura]

This is a very bad idea. You are effectively gambling with your future.

Stop hoping for some lucky break and get serious about building success and wealth. This is not done through speculative gimmickry like crypto, it's done through serious business or career.

Investing all your savings and going into debt for crypto and NFTs is extremely foolish and you will most likely lose your pants. Change what you're doing before you get seriously burned.

[Hello from Russia]

Stop the side hustle bs, start doing the MAIN hustle (lol)

By investing into crypto & stocks you're losing a ton in opportunity costs of not investing in your skills, well-being, comfort, good nutrition, good environment. All this will be bring you a ton more benefits for years to come than some bs crypto or stock market

And it's not even about money, it's also about time you invest into that shit. it's a deep rabbit hole, if you're spending most of your time researching this stuff and various fad business schemes, ur doing yourself a huge disservice

Edited January 28, 2022 by Hello from Russia

[Space]

@7thLetter I don't think that investing into crypto is a bad idea. It's a good investment imo. Just definitely don't put all your money there. My portfolio is about 5-10% crypto. But this should not be your main focus or source of income.

26 IS young but you need to start making some serious decisions about what you're going to do over the next 5 years. Might be an obvious question but have you sat down and written out exactly what you want/don't want? 

When I was 26 I made the hard decision that I was going become a world class illustrator and I would put all my attention, focus, and plans towards this goal. I dabbled for years prior to this, in a very similar way to you (spent 2 years doing Amazon FBA). I spent years working a shit job in marketing whilst grinding my illustration skills outside of work. It was brutal.

But guess what? 3/4 years later I am a professional illustrator earning enough to pay my bills and live and do whatever the hell I want without a boss. This shit works. I literally escaped wage slavery. You gotta just pick something that is in line with your interests and natural abilities and stick to it! Without fail! Investing my money carefully also contributed to me being able to leave wage slavery.

This was a hard decision because I could have chosen 10 other professions or paths to go down. Part of life is having the discipline and maturity to let go of a lot of shit in order to fully pursue one or two goals. No one has a singular life purpose, everyone can become great at many things. But you gotta choose something and stick to it.

Ultimately it comes down to what skills are you going to focus on learning and developing? You can't learn everything so you gotta work hard to make a firm decision about what you're gonna do. But it's all about knowledge, skills and then become so good they can't ignore you. 

Hope this helps.

[Average Investor]

Some investing is wise, but I would not be dumping it into things with that kind of attitude towards it. I have done fairly well investing, but the amount of time I put in, would have been better off put into making a serious business. Very rarely do people just have a lucky break, when they start a new business or investment that gets them huge financial success. It usually requires a long term disciplined strategy. 

7 hours ago, 7thLetter said:

In my early 20s and even at 18 & 19 years old I always thought I was going to be rich by 25.

You have to realize even having $80,000 in cash would put you in the top 1% wealthiest in the world for that age of 25. A good amount of people are $80,000 in debt at this age lol. Most people who are in the 1% like that don't sustain it going further anyway. Most people I know at this age that supposedly look successful are just massively pilled with debt, that or they have kids with loads of debt. You are so young and have plenty of time to build some wealth, but how you are going about it is going to be ruff. 

7 hours ago, 7thLetter said:

I work on a few side hustles right now but still I'm sort of not putting in enough effort into them.

Less side hustles and find one thing to really knock out of the park. It is easier said than done sometimes, when you have bills to pay. If you are doing too many things you are going to be mediocre at all of them. 

[flowboy]

@7thLetter  I believe we had a DM conversation about this, but it may have been about something else.

7 hours ago, 7thLetter said:

In my early 20s and even at 18 & 19 years old I always thought I was going to be rich by 25. I've always chased different side hustles like flipping, pyramid schemes, blogging, Youtube, dropshipping, Amazon FBA, etc. But they never really worked out for me because I half-assed everything. While I was acting like I was doing productive shit, I wasn't putting in enough effort.

Hey, that sounds a lot like me.

I also planned to be successful at a young age, but I couldn't really push through on the initiatives I took, and the opportunities I got.

But as I look at it today, being 29, I can see there was a good reason for that.

I was held back by inner problems I had to resolve first. And doing that also showed me a much more meaningful purpose. I'm happier than ever today, my success is growing fast, literally having to cry tears of joy almost daily. (Ok, I'm having an emotional week ok:))

So it's all good in the end, even though it definitely didn't seem that way when I was beating myself up over still not having started that business, et cetera.

An important part for you, I sense, is to forgive yourself?

Your view that you "weren't putting in enough effort" is perhaps true, but very one-sided and self-punishing.

There must be a mindset issue holding you back from putting in enough effort, or you would have!

And that mindset problem is something you either inherited, or built up as a defense mechanism against unpleasant or traumatic circumstances earlier on in your life.

So acknowledge that.

This is part of your karma, and you can deal with it and heal it, if you respect it and allow space for it.

And trust that you will find your success when you are ready to receive it.

So keep pushing and working and doing courageaus steps to become ready.

 

I won't go into the crypto thing but I agree with Leo on that.

Edited January 28, 2022 by flowboy

[Yarco]

Context: I'm probably the most pro-crypto person that will reply to this. About 40% of my liquid assets are currently in crypto, I'm gonna buy the dip if Bitcoin continues to drop further in the current market, and I own multiple NFTs.

I still think NFTs are really really bad investments. Taking on debt to buy them is an incredibly bad idea. If you're able to get out of your NFTs at approximately what you paid for them or a small loss atm, I'd do that right away and put the money into something safer.

I basically regret buying every NFT that I have. They are way worse than buying an altcoin that's out of the Top 100 on Coinmarketcap. If you buy NFTs you better really like them, because you might be stuck with them as wall art in your house in the Metaverse forever. 

Every step you go from the Top 10 cryptos, to the top 25, to the top 50, it gets exponentially more risky and likely that each coin won't even exist in 5 years. NFTs are like a Top 1,000 coin and 99% of them will be worthless in 5 years.

At the same time, I understand the sense of hopelessness like you have to take a gamble or you'll never make it in life. That's basically the fuel behind the whole GME / AMC thing too.

IMO you can take moonshots, but they still need to have a chance of succeeding. A 5x - 10x gain might be possible, but chasing 100x or 1000x gains will almost certainly get you wrecked.

My goal is to stack sats to 1.0 BTC someday and then hold it until 2030 or later, but I know even at current crashed prices I'll never be able to accomplish that without some risk. Almost all of my crypto investment right now is in a single Top 10 coin that I think is going to 5x or 10x over the same time period that Bitcoin is going to 3x from current prices. Then I'll trade it out for 1 BTC and hold. I have to cross my fingers and hope it works out to have a chance at ever owning 1 whole Bitcoin without pouring my life savings in to do it. It's incredibly stressful and every time it drops or goes sideways for too long, I question whether I've made a horrible mistake.

It takes a certain kind of person to be able to do that. Basically I'm gambling between being able to pay off my mortgage in a couple years, vs possibly losing 1/10th the value of my mortgage that I could've just paid off risk-free instead.

Here's maybe the most important thing though... I think there's a very narrow window of people who it makes sense to gamble on crypto. If you're so broke that you can only put $1,000 or less in, then even if Bitcoin goes to $1,000,000 you still won't even be able to afford a new car with it. If you can't afford to put at least a few thousand into crypto, you'll never experience life-changing gains. You might as well spend that money buying 1 or 2 high-quality online courses that will teach you a valuable skill instead.

On the opposite end, if you already have a six-figure net worth then it's kinda foolish to put more than about 5% of your net worth into crypto because it's so risky. 

So basically that leaves crypto as a last shot for an average working guy making $30k - $60k a year who's never going to be able to own a house or "make it" in life without taking the risk. At the same time, you can't be so overleveraged on your crypto so if it loses 50% value you can't go on paying your bills and living. It has to be money you can afford to let sit there for years. So it's not many people that the scenario even applies to.

(Not financial advice, you're literally reading the ramblings of a crazy person right now)

Also never rely on your crypto to keep increasing your net worth. It's tempting to see it go up 10% in a week and think that working a regular job for $100/day is pretty dumb. But you have to keep going on earning money in case it doesn't work out.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Yarco

[INFP RACOON BABY]

Not many people will probably tell you this but crypto is statistically by far far far the most likely way you will get rich.  So you should stick at it but also you need to be smart about it. You need to think outside the box. But you also need to have a plan b because it will make you feel better and takes the pressure off.

I know because i started trading crypto in 2017 without a plan b and man was it painful but here i am 4 years later up a lot of money now i am 31 i started trading forex at 23 then switched to crypto 2017 and it took me 7 years to be a profitable trader so trust me it is much harder than you think but also I know statistically I was not getting rich any other way.

 

[Miguel1]

5 hours ago, INFP RACOON BABY said:

it took me 7 years to be a profitable trader

So many fundamental problems with this.

1. All that time, you could have actually spent on building something meaningful for you and for humankind, that you are passionate about and your life quality would have been much better, including your mental wellbeing. And you would have probably been rewarded more money.

2. Trading is fundamentally just stealing money from others, especially from beginners who don't know what the fuck they are doing. You provide 0 value to anybody, you are useless. You are a leech. And you prey off of gullible beginners who don't know better. In a more conscious society, this shit is illegal.

3. Now that you have money, then what? Are you gonna spend the rest of your life doing this shit and stare at your screen? Wake up.

[Alex_R]

Learn how to study better using the pomodoro technique, if you became a high performance you can finish a career or a high income skill in less than 2 years, its definitively not late for you.

 

Just pick something that fits you and has a good market and go for it

[mojsterr]

edit

Edited February 22, 2022 by mojsterr

[VictorB02]

@7thLetter You'll be happy in 10 years that you started and stuck to something real and true that wasn't this "bro life" way of making money like drop-shipping, crypto. You need heart man. That's what life purpose is.

You need to find what it is in life that sets your soul on fire and makes you feel like life is extraordinary, then share that. Express that. In whatever way you feel.

It may be ice-cream, or deep sea fishing. Idk what it is for you, but you gotta find and connect with that, build a super strong foundation and stay with it for 10+ years. 

Because when you're 36, you could easily be in the same spot you are now if you don't start building something true and real to your heart.

But if you start now and its a true expression of your inner most being, whatever happens in 10 years will be well worth it.

[Michal__]

Spend 2 - 4 hours after work building your business (don't do anything related to nfts, stocks etc, I mean an actual business eg. consulting or copywriting or programming etc -  something that provides value).

Those 2 - 4 hours MUST be completely undistracted (no phone checking, social media, anything not related shouldn't be done during this time period). 

Explanation:

Deep works starts after ~15 minutes of undistracted work. If you check your notifications (or whatever other distraction you like) every few minutes you actually never hit that point. Since your concentration falls away every time you become distracted. 

Most people who think they're putting like 5 hours in are actually so distracted during that time period that they only achieve like 40 minutes of work (those numbers are rough estimates).

After about an hour of work with zero distractions (don't take any breaks during the whole 2 - 4 hours, unless you're super tired) you'll be able to do way deeper work than usual.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Michal__

[DaveB]

28 minutes ago, Michal__ said:

Spend 2 - 4 hours after work building your business (don't do anything related to nfts, stocks etc, I mean an actual business eg. consulting or copywriting or programming etc -  something that provides value).

Those 2 - 4 hours MUST be completely undistracted (no phone checking, social media, anything not related shouldn't be done during this time period). 

Explanation:

Deep works starts after ~15 minutes of undistracted work. If you check your notifications (or whatever other distraction you like) every few minutes you actually never hit that point. Since your concentration falls away every time you become distracted. 

Most people who think they're putting like 5 hours in are actually so distracted during that time period that they only achieve like 40 minutes of work (those numbers are rough estimates).

After about an hour of work with zero distractions (don't take any breaks during the whole 2 - 4 hours, unless you're super tired) you'll be able to do way deeper work than usual.

So after 8 hours of work (if he gets 9-17 job), he will be working another 4 hours, that's 12 hours! 
that won't be sustainable in a long run.

[KoryKat]

On 1/28/2022 at 3:22 AM, 7thLetter said:

I'm 26 and I feel like I'm pissing my life away. People might say "Oh you're 26 you're still young", but I honestly do feel like I'm running out of time.

I just found out, this is the norm for us younger... Because our lives have been nothing but full of uncertainty and changing times

 

On 1/28/2022 at 3:22 AM, 7thLetter said:

Career-wise, I don't have a lot going for me. I've been jumping from job to job in the restaurant industry working in the back & front of house. I've been thinking of switching it up and doing landscaping or some type of general labor work. I also got certified to become a personal trainer 6-7 years ago but I never pursued a career in that field. I may look into getting into that now though.

In my early 20s and even at 18 & 19 years old I always thought I was going to be rich by 25. I've always chased different side hustles like flipping, pyramid schemes, blogging, Youtube, dropshipping, Amazon FBA, etc. But they never really worked out for me because I half-assed everything. While I was acting like I was doing productive shit, I wasn't putting in enough effort.

Now I'm lost, and I've been lost. My only plan is to continue to slave away and put that money into crypto & NFTs with hopes of it potentially changing my life in the near-future. I have most of my savings in crypto and I took on some debt for NFTs.

I have a lot of good habits in place in other areas of my life, thinking that they'll help change my financial situation but to be brutally honest it doesn't change much. You can get your health and body in shape but that won't exactly do anything for your finances or productivity. You can work on building your discipline through ice baths or training hard at the gym or doing MMA, etc. But when are you going to work on your side hustle or business?

I work on a few side hustles right now but still I'm sort of not putting in enough effort into them.

Any advice?

Sounds like my life, but I am 33, and I feel like I tasted success early, but then I doubted myself and went down the rabbit hole...

Dude, you want to talk about habits you can seriously leverage for productivity, and they only take a few minutes a day!  
1) very cold shower, control yourself to be happy+relaxed, the longer you forget about trying to get out of the cold, the better!
2) breathing techniques,  I was alternating Wim Hof and  4-7-8  (while going to the gym I might add, which I hear is BY FAR the primary GO-TO for getting productive)     

I found this useful for focusing, I've been meaning to do it again.  (and running a Pomodoro timer) 

Also for crypto trading - I would check out Alex Becker microtrading and Cameron Fous,  my opinion is they seem top notch

Also also  : Accountability!!  Set up a system to punish yourself...   Offer to pay them $20 if you dont work (or whatever you can substitute for $20, but it has to SUCK losing it)

Also also also : work on your Identity!  (check out Psycho-cybernetics 101) 

If you want , I will hold you accountable, and you can help teach me this stuff as a way to check your learning.   

I hate to say "You just gotta do it" but there is a couple Procrastination videos on Optimize.me and I bet HealthyGamerGG has a good procrastination video too  

Honestly what really helped me back in the day, was watching people do the thing like a mimic.. so like , watch a livestream video / make friends with people doing it, and just keep being a sponge... and using your voice externally to say "I am working on this now" (present tense)  so you can hear yourself, preferably around others so the pressure of embarassment pushes you

 

[Michal__]

11 hours ago, DaveB said:

So after 8 hours of work (if he gets 9-17 job), he will be working another 4 hours, that's 12 hours! 
that won't be sustainable in a long run.

It won't take you more than a year to get your business to a point where it matches your country's average salary (if you don't seriously fuck up).

After that you can quit your job.

It's very doable (if you drop your hobbies etc for a while and when you're short on time then work only 2h on your husin).

Temporary stage blue level of discipline beats relying on NFTs anytime.

[INFP RACOON BABY]

11 hours ago, KoryKat said:

I just found out, this is the norm for us younger... Because our lives have been nothing but full of uncertainty and changing times

 

Sounds like my life, but I am 33, and I feel like I tasted success early, but then I doubted myself and went down the rabbit hole...

Dude, you want to talk about habits you can seriously leverage for productivity, and they only take a few minutes a day!  
1) very cold shower, control yourself to be happy+relaxed, the longer you forget about trying to get out of the cold, the better!
2) breathing techniques,  I was alternating Wim Hof and  4-7-8  (while going to the gym I might add, which I hear is BY FAR the primary GO-TO for getting productive)     

I found this useful for focusing, I've been meaning to do it again.  (and running a Pomodoro timer) 

Also for crypto trading - I would check out Alex Becker microtrading and Cameron Fous,  my opinion is they seem top notch

Also also  : Accountability!!  Set up a system to punish yourself...   Offer to pay them $20 if you dont work (or whatever you can substitute for $20, but it has to SUCK losing it)

Also also also : work on your Identity!  (check out Psycho-cybernetics 101) 

If you want , I will hold you accountable, and you can help teach me this stuff as a way to check your learning.   

I hate to say "You just gotta do it" but there is a couple Procrastination videos on Optimize.me and I bet HealthyGamerGG has a good procrastination video too  

Honestly what really helped me back in the day, was watching people do the thing like a mimic.. so like , watch a livestream video / make friends with people doing it, and just keep being a sponge... and using your voice externally to say "I am working on this now" (present tense)  so you can hear yourself, preferably around others so the pressure of embarassment pushes you

 

I dont know about the other trading teachers you mentioned but i know for sure alex becker is a scam.

[INFP RACOON BABY]

On 22/02/2022 at 1:28 AM, Migue Lonas said:

So many fundamental problems with this.

1. All that time, you could have actually spent on building something meaningful for you and for humankind, that you are passionate about and your life quality would have been much better, including your mental wellbeing. And you would have probably been rewarded more money.

2. Trading is fundamentally just stealing money from others, especially from beginners who don't know what the fuck they are doing. You provide 0 value to anybody, you are useless. You are a leech. And you prey off of gullible beginners who don't know better. In a more conscious society, this shit is illegal.

3. Now that you have money, then what? Are you gonna spend the rest of your life doing this shit and stare at your screen? Wake up.

1, At the time I didnt even have any concept of building anything meaningful and it was before I knew anything about that stuff so i cant turn back time can I,

2. Yeah it its a crazy thing but its like many market places if you think about it. If you try and start a business most newbies will lose money setting up a business becasue they dont know what they are doing similar to trading. Does not make it morally right just saying.

3. Now I am going to foucs on getting really good at chess maybe become a chess coach and help people learn or maybe i become a psychologist.

[Arcangelo]

Crypto is the future.