2024: Discipline Beyond Motivation

This is the first time in a long time that I haven't really celebrated New Year's Eve. I was supposed to go someplace and do that, but I didn't actually have the mood to do so and thus quit it... Maybe December 31st, 2024, will be better. Maybe...

It's natural to wish for the better and to set higher and higher goals, but, as is the case for the majority of us, as natural as setting goals is, so does work in the case of failing to achieve these goals. Why, one would ask.

Well, it's pretty simple: getting motivated is easy; motivation is like a spark that's ignited in a millisecond but can often times get tamed down at the same pace it got ignited. Motivation is cool, and it definitely feeds the brain a bit of dopamine just by setting goals and making plans.

However, it is discipline that carries the weight of actually fulfilling the goals. I have a few examples in this regard. Like, for example, going to the gym and transforming oneself. There are quite a few who set themselves the goal on December 31st or January 1st to start hitting the gym constantly in the following year and transform their body.

How many get to achieve these goals? Very few, you can bet on that one. All the new faces that you are going to see during January and February in the gym are going to be gone by April, if they can last that long.

The same principle can apply to crypto as well. How many of you have set themselves the goal to turn X amount of money invested in crypto into ten times that amount or more and ended up wasting a full-blown bull market and securing no profit at all by the end of the bullish cycle?

I sure know I did it. It's easy to get motivated, but it is way harder to stay disciplined and on track with the plan. Motivation is a high-intensity feeling that one can get, but discipline goes beyond that and entails going through all sorts of physical and mental states.

The way I see it, being disciplined in crypto means to set goals (dumping targets) for your portfolio and once the targets get hit to start dumping the damn coins. It's that simple. But many will fail at doing so just because the thought of dumping the whole portfolio at once at higher levels seems more appealing (theoretically you can earn more by doing that).

The bull market usually fades into a full-blown bear market without any public announcements and notifications; when the buying pressure starts dimming itself, the hodlers will agree to sell lower and lower, thus driving the market down. It's that easy.

Hence, having a DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging) plan for the market as it goes up and sticking to it is of utmost importance. A plan that is made by you and no one else, a plan that includes securing profits way below what you might consider outrageous numbers. It's definitely worth holding some bags all the way to the moon, but if you are disciplined enough, you will realize that it's risky to not take profits during a bull market.

Being disciplined means to also be fine with your portfolio or any type of progress to stall or even regress for a while. Discipline knows what long-term plans and actions entail and what the taste of delayed gratification should taste like. Motivation is like tequila shots at a bar on a Friday night; at some point, the lights will turn down, and the show will be over.

Anyway, I don't want to make this first post of 2024 too long. You probably got the gist of it from the introduction. I wanna wish you all, nevertheless, a great 2024, may all your wishes come true, and may Hive have its value recognized in the crypto space. Till next time...

Thanks for your attention,
Adrian