You know what pisses me off? You win and people say you just got lucky. But the biggest variable was your own doing. Your decisions. You took the risk and leaned in. Ignorance or coping: the deniers can't see the forest for the trees. They envy you, and luck is the salve. They are wrong. Another 435 words and you'll know what they're missing. It has a name.
You have a big dream. You write down goals, sketch the route, start executing. Step after step. Simple. The first step is easy, perhaps the second too. The route lies crystal clear — while the sun shines and no curve balls come. But life ain't like that.
Here is the secret. On paper, staying the course is the easiest thing in the world; in reality, the hardest thing you will ever do. You think you have discipline; this time the diet sticks. Then life hits. You stop. You fall. Do you get up again? Most don't. They stay down. They get hit and make the wrong decision at the wrong time.
Risky assets are volatile. Higher expected return, higher implied volatility. Big gains demand big swings. Nobody minds upside volatility; the downside breaks people. Total loss exists. Accept it. Assets without risk are return-free. You won't get anywhere without accepting risk. Volatility must be sat through. Don't do the mental maths of what you lost today. Don't question your sanity in the middle of the night. A says you're crazy. B recommends XYZ. Sitting through that noise is the work.
And whence come A and B? The herd. The herd is a school of goldfish. Thousands darting the same direction at the same ripple. Today crypto, tomorrow AI stocks. Red day — sell. Green week — buy. TV says crash — panic. Influencer says moon — pile in. Three-second memory, ten-thousand-fold. The herd holds nothing. Shifty as a flag in the wind. It buys tops because tops feel safe, sells bottoms because bottoms hurt. And at the bottom? You'll be lonely. No one believes you. Everyone runs the other way — to them, you're the wrong-way driver. Last man standing, ten years deep, unbothered. Then the herd looks at you and calls you lucky.
The skill they refuse to see has a name: time preference. High time preference wants it now — the dopamine, the exit, the relief of selling the dip. Low time preference eats pain today for the payoff in a decade. That's the whole game. Not intelligence, not timing, not tips. Decide once, then endure — while the goldfish forget and react, forget and react.
So no, it wasn't luck. It was ten thousand days of not flinching. Luck is the word high time preference goldfish use for the winnings of low time preference lunatics. They can't hold a thought for three seconds — a ten-year hold looks like witchcraft. Alien. Let them gawp and gossip. Stay the course. The goldfish will have forgotten you by tomorrow anyway.