NFT Mental Health
Wait! — Here are 3 easy ways you can start practicing patience
Harvest the results: save time and money, and double down on joy.
“You can’t just plant a seed and water and sun the crap out of it,” @ethernaz
It’s not gonna grow quicker, is it?!
And yet, especially with NFT projects, we want it all right now. In part 1 of “Wait!” I told you what this behaviour cost us. I’d say it’s time to change — let’s see what options we have to improve our collective patience:
- Lean into discomfort
You mint on a hype project. It’s not looking as promising as everyone hoped. You panic-sell. Follow the herd. Taking an instant loss.
You avoided the pain of losing money.
But when you panic list, you don’t consider other factors.
We (mostly ACT therapists) call these unintended consequences.
Fact: unintended consequences cause much more pain in the long run.
The unintended consequence is that you didn’t even give any time for the project to work out what it wants to work out (this doesn’t apply for rugs) and therefore forfeited your potential long term gains.
How often have you seen people comment — “I’ve sold, now it will moon.” When you lean in, you lean into discomfort (you can lean into comfort too, but that’s usually not something most people struggle with).
Lean in= accept the fear and risk . Tolerate it. Give it space. Be with it.
Give this a try before making a rushed decision next time:
- once you notice impatience has arrived, see what it brings
- take a breath and notice your surroundings
- talk to others: alpha groups, Twitter groups, perhaps the discord of the project in question isn’t the best place to air these thoughts
Bonus tip:
Check-in with your intentions.
2. Experiment
Now, the meaty part. The above works well, but what’s even better is if you can practice without major risks.
How?
Set up your own experiments.
It doesn’t necessarily have to include NFTs, but it can.
Here are a few ideas:
- Order something and click on the delivery option which takes the longest or is the most inconvenient and wait
- Put deliberate breaks into your calendars that don’t make logical sense — i.e., a 17-minute gap in between two calls, not enough to do something but too long not to do anything
- pick the queue in the supermarket which is the longest
- engage with a new up-and-coming project that has no set mint date
Remember, in order to complete any experiment, you will need to lean in:
- notice and accept the discomfort
- breathe
- check goals/intentions
After the experiment, make sure you take stock:
- What have you learned?
- How can you apply what you’ve taken away in the future?
Experiments are not proper experiments without checking their validity:
- Repeat them often
3. Zoom out
When you are impatient, you likely focus on the present too much. It’s feeding your ego — me, me, me.
That’s not helpful.
If you happen to remember you have the option to zoom out, it might help to practice it:
- you may get a different perspective: grand scheme of things, how does this situation affect you
- you notice something you didn’t before
- Bonus: it’s not hard to do this part
Below is a link to Part 1 of Wait!:
Phew! If you read this long, I appreciate your attention and patience. Let me know what you think and how your experiments are going.
