A Pressure Engine

Bitcoin as a tool for growth

I've been underwater with my Bitcoin investments for my first year buying and holding Bitcoin. It’s been the most valuable way I’ve ever spent my money.

A few months after I started buying Bitcoin last year, the prices hit an all time high. That was exciting. Then, the price started going down.

I bought Bitcoin. The price went down. I bought more. The price went down further. 

This has been the general trend for the last six months. Riding the ups and downs is part of the process of investing, and my first big lesson was navigating the dips without freaking out. 

Over the spring and summer, I made a plan for investing within a margin that I could live with. Through the fall, I lived within my budget, paid toward my debts, and stayed inside of my personal bandwidth for risk and investing.

I listened to the perspectives of the people who had been buying and holding bitcoin a lot longer than I had, and who had ridden the rollercoaster through some dips without “puking up” their Bitcoin along the way. (Better known as panic selling.)

I listened to seasoned perspectives about the mental game of investing, and the patience and waiting that’s required.

I watched the price go down further. I wondered if I was crazy for sticking with this process, so I learned more about the qualities of good money, how Bitcoin was built, and the framework of our current financial system. 

Each time I learned more, my understanding of how to use Bitcoin became clearer, so I kept buying it with each paycheck.

The price dipped, I studied, and my confidence in the Bitcoin system increased. I knew I could live with my choices if it all went sideways. I wasn’t making these decisions because someone else was telling me what to do. I was doing this because it made the most sense to me.

One of my favorite writers is a guy named Dr. David Schnarch. He talked a lot about something he called “The Process of Differentiation," which is the ability to stay clear about your priorities while the world around you is yelling about their own opinions. Basically it’s about growing up.

One of his overarching points is that we often try to avoid or bail out of situations that make us feel uncomfortable and anxious. But it’s the uncomfortable pressure that pushes us to choose our priorities, and ultimately grow and change.

We grow when we stop reacting to the outside pressure and noise around us–to people telling us what they think we should do–and figure out what we think we should do.

The challenge, then, is calming down long enough to make these sorts of internal choices from the best parts of ourselves rather than the part that is squirming to get out of the discomfort. 

Schnarch called it “holding on to yourself.”

So I practiced “holding on to myself” and staying clear about my investment plan, regardless of what the internet yelled about the unknown future as the price of Bitcoin bounced along like a rubber ball.

There was a point when the price was bouncing up and down, but mostly down, and I was thinking about how great it would be to buy more Bitcoin while the price was low.

In the middle of this, I was offered a job opportunity—the kind I spent my entire 20s working toward.

I was excited and flattered. For the first few weeks, I wrapped up projects and prepared for interviews. I envisioned this as my ticket to finally kicking the debt, saving my comfortable Bitcoin nest egg, and hitting my career stride.

It was the perfect job, except I had the growing inkling that it wasn’t the perfect job for me anymore.

It felt risky to say no to an old plan that used to be exciting, and still felt impressive. But now it felt more risky to stay on a path that wasn’t heading where I wanted to go. Investing my time, energy and attention in a direction that didn’t lead toward building the future I wanted.

So I said “Thank you, but no.”

The chatter in my head— what I should do, how wonderful the opportunity was, and the problems it would fix—sounded convincing. But when I held onto myself long enough to pay attention to my priorities, I knew what I actually wanted to build next.

It turned out that holding onto my Bitcoin, through the pressure of the dips, was more than just a financial investment exercise. It was building a new muscle inside of me.

While I thought I was just learning how to invest my money, I’d been building my ability to make clear decisions under pressure in all areas of life, especially around my most valuable resources: time, attention, and energy. 

Holding onto my Bitcoin is a practice of investing my money, but it’s also a mirror for how I invest everything else. It's forging me into a different kind of person.

DISCLAIMER:

What I share here is based on my own experiences and opinions about money, finances, and the Bitcoin system. These views are mine alone and don’t represent the beliefs or opinions of my family, household, or anyone around me. I do appreciate their support as I share my personal experience.

Nothing shared here should be taken as financial, investment, or legal advice.