Experience can be a cruel teacher

There's a popular saying that experience is the best teacher, suggesting that most important lessons in life are best learnt from personal experiences. Lessons learnt in such a manner are seldom forgotten, though sometimes we choose to ignore or forget them usually depending on the emotions they cause us to have when we recall such experiences.

The ones that elicit feelings of pains or regret are usually the ones that often times we opt to forget or dread having to relive as no one wants to have a repeat of an occurrence that brings sorrow. However sometimes having to reflect or recall painful experiences may just be what one needs to be cautious or careful so as not to fall into error or repeat past mistakes.

Conversely the ones that elicit feelings of joy or satisfaction (no matter how shortlived they might have been) are the ones we tend to recall or better still want to re experience. While this may apparently be a good thing, it may not be so in all instances. For cases that involve commiting crime or breaking the law and thereafter getting away with it without facing any consequences, there is a tendency to want to repeat such misadventures or misdemeanour. Same applies to cases of addiction as the individual tends to return to the subject of addiction because of what was deemed a 'pleasurable' experience irrespective of the consequences that would follow.

We've all had our fair share of experiences where we had to learn the hard or painful way. Sometimes we have such experiences because of naivety and at other times due to sheer recklessness or worse still deliberately choosing to ignore the warning signs which were literally right in front of us. Thus for some people, it often takes repeated occurrences of unpleasant experiences for them to learn the appropriate lesson and thereafter take the necessary precautions to avoid a repeat of such.

There is hardly an adult on the planet who hasn't made bad or Ill-advised investment decisions at some point in their lives. It's often the price paid sometimes for taking risks. I can recall vividly like it was yesterday the first time I lost funds in what I thought was a genuine business opportunity which later turned out to be a ponzi scheme of sorts. The investment started off well with payouts or profits coming as expected thus creating a false sense of security amongst first time investors like myself who were just cutting their teeth.

Then delays started coming in till eventually the whole thing burst in our faces leaving nothing but a sour taste in the mouth. It hit some of us real hard, creating a phobia for any investment that involved anything online. Thus when crypto took center stage particularly when the pandemic hit, many were reluctant to get on board because of the previous bad experiences they had.

I was one of such people who hesitated coming on board the crypto train till we were almost past the climax of the pandemic. Because of the phobia from past online investments that failed several genuine opportunities were missed. One of the most painful ones was the UniSwap airdrop, this I dare say was the miss that jolted me and motivated me to cast aside my fears and take a bold dive into the crypto space.

As fate would have it, this decision paid off within a few months as I not only got rewarded in a massive airdrop, I also managed to to make a good investment in a project which turned out to be one of the top projects on the BNB Smart Chart Chain as of today.

However with these successes came a challenge. It was that of FOMOing on any opportunity to make one's portfolio richer or bigger with the prospect of earning more profits. Thus because of not properly managing the emotion of happiness from the previous successful experience with investing and eagerness not to miss out of any possible future prospect I ended up losing some funds in some projects which appeared to be promising but either ended up rug pulling or their tokens tanking in terms of value even when the projects didn't go under.

Thus from the above bitter experience I learnt the hard way the need for always doing one's research and not just APEing into any project due to the emotion of FOMOing. This is important because one needs to be able to filter through the abundance of noise from different traders characteristic of the market place to pick the right ware or product. Just as there are traders who are deceptive in the real world market, there are also devs in the crypto space who are deceptive and have engaged in fraudulent activities.

To conclude, I opine that in some instances, having to go through a learning curve via experiences is wholly unnecessary especially when one is not a pathfinder or pioneer in the area being treaded or explored. In scenarios such as these the best option is to seek the stories of those who have once taken the route we are about to take.

This is to enable one digest them, make improvements or modifications to the steps they took to make progress (where necessary) and most importantly learn from their mistakes so as not to repeat them. Ironically though for the most bizarre reasons as humans sometimes we still choose to go down paths which from the experiences of others before us lead to sadness or destruction.