Mindful Blockchain — Tips to Fight FOMO
If you are in the financial space, especially the investment branch, for more than a few days, you’ll come across FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). These two sentiments are no strangers to the crypto industry. Actually, you can apply these concepts to anything in life. Just think of the time you were sick at home, and your friends went out for drinks. You can lie in bed fearing they had the best night of their lives while you are at home (FOMO) and simultaneously convince yourself that because you missed this night, they’ll never want to hang out with you again because you are a disgusting virus vessel now (FUD). It’s safe to say you’re overreacting, and the same tends to be the case within our blockchain world of finance. Especially these days, with Bitcoin reaching new highs and entering the price discovery phase of the current bull phase of the four-year cycle, the hype media is pushing out articles left and right to make you feel left behind if you don’t act now. In a previous article, we covered the dangers of this type of media and its unsavory use of hyperbolic vocabulary to stimulate your emotions and trigger impulsive decisions. Today, we would like to highlight why the fear of missing out is so deceiving. If you take a deep breath, reorganize your thoughts, and focus on your previously defined investment strategy, you’ll most likely fare a lot better through the stormy blockchain oceans than if you buy at the momentary peak of the token chart you like, and then panic sell if it doesn’t continue upwards immediately. We are an instant-result society, right? “Tomorrow Never Comes,” the seventh most famous double-O once proclaimed to its viewership (Spoiler: It did).
Managing the Emotional Currents
There are so many ways that we can get tricked into believing something that isn’t factually accurate. Hype media, fake news, and bad communication can play havoc with our decision-making skills. Then there is our own mind playing tricks on ourselves by misappropriating the received information over time. Thankfully, there are many things we can do to learn and manage the temptations of misguided impulsivity.
Let’s start with the most important technique concerning the financial realm we find ourselves in. Never start investing or trading without clear goals and strategies. Having those in place is the first barrier to being susceptible to short-term market fluctuations and hype. Keep your eyes on the end zone, not the dancing cheerleaders on the sideline. As an investor (in anything), you should always know what you want to achieve with your decisions and how much risk you are comfortable with.
That said, the only way you can effectively do that is by conducting serious research into the topic, project, or people you want to invest your money in. This is your responsibility, within the cryptocurrency sector more so than anywhere else, and therefore it is crucial to make sure you use reputable sources of information (focusing on factual reporting, instead of emotional headlines). Furthermore, as we are all very busy people and hardly find time to catch our breath, let alone read, it’s crucial to set time frames throughout the day to research your topics of interest but also the projects you are already invested in. Keeping yourself up to date with current events is a good start to fight the onset of FOMO (or FUD) when things seem to be suddenly moving on the charts and your social media feeds are exploding with hyperbolic headlines.
With that in mind, for most of us, it is important to manage our social media activity. For most of the day, we tend to scroll too much through timelines with empty messages, so the first exciting headline can easily trigger our impulsivity. But if we keep our minds engaged with productive work and keep ourselves informed about long-term trends, it could be easier to brush off these posts. Especially when we learn how to limit our online exposure, we tend to fade out most irrelevant messages to begin with, and our minds are more critical towards the posts we are seeing.
It’s not that easy though. You can surround yourself with the right people, educate yourself regularly, read up on projects, and stay on top of current events. This does not mean that the current short-term trend aligns with your personal long-term strategy. Once you have gathered all the information and have considered the latest headlines, it is important to step away from your portfolio and let the information sink in. For example, if Bitcoin is dropping 20% after a 50% rally, we are at the beginning of a bull cycle, and right before the halving event, you’d probably be making a different decision than if we were far past the halving event, far into the bull cycle, and Bitcoin jumps 5% after having seen a 15% correction several days prior. Context matters in every decision, but triggering your FOMO could push you into a decision that you knew was bad if you had taken the time to think.
Last but not least, it is of course useful to be on social media. It’s a great source to gather information and experience community sentiment for a project (or sub-sector). More importantly, it also serves greatly to build a network of people you trust and can have discussions with to throw ideas, knowledge, and experiences back and forth. It’s a cliché, but very true that we are stronger together. The hive mind approach leads to more opportunities (and threats, if not careful) and should not be missing as an approach to fight FOMO. In moments of mental weakness, trusted voices of reason are important. Having those can be a portfolio saver.
Factoring in Reading versus Understanding
Even if you do manage to control your emotional triggers, if you lack the knowledge to interpret data correctly, all the mental strength will not serve you efficiently. Blockchain is famous for decentralization, and therefore making decisions is your responsibility. It is crucial that you learn how to read graphs, how to use trading tools (such as Trading View), and understand tokenomics, market capitalization concepts, and token liquidity. Without this knowledge and understanding, you will always be at the mercy of those who deal you information. Once you know at least the basics, it will become easier to scan through the mountains of headlines, articles, and social media posts to distinguish garbage from gold.
Concluding Thoughts
Ask yourself a simple question: Will this massive, sudden, uptrend never reverse? The answer is, as all graphs prove, “no”. Just because you miss an opportunity doesn’t mean you’re too late. They come at different times, in different shades, and in different forms. Patience, knowing that your strategy will lead to completing your goals, is probably the most important skill a trader needs to learn. Even if it can be difficult to fight our instincts and accept that instant results are rare moments of luck, patience usually leads to greater results down the road. Don’t let your fear of missing out take control over your decision-making capabilities. Remember, if FOMO didn’t get you, FUD might still get you tomorrow. Leaving out emotion and keeping decisions factual and rational usually lead to greater results over the long term, especially in financial matters.
At Fish and Chips Crypto, we are more than happy to welcome you to our Discord community, where you can always hang out and discuss blockchain-related topics. We will also happily try to help you manage your emotions, just as we will probably need your comforting words when the tables have turned. Thank you for reading.
