If you lost money this bull run or didn’t hit your targets, good. Maybe that’s exactly what you needed. Because let’s be real, you got comfortable. You thought you had it all figured out. You thought the market was easy, that you were just one trade away from changing your life and then reality slapped you in the face, hard. I lost a lot of money in 2017 and thought I was a failure. I convinced myself I was just unlucky, that the market was unfair, that I “deserved” to make it back, but the truth? I was just another idiot who mistook hype for a strategy. The market didn’t betray me, I betrayed myself. Just like you did. You can sit there and blame manipulation, influencers, “bad timing,” or whatever excuse makes you feel better. You can tell yourself, “Next time will be different,” while doing absolutely nothing to ensure it actually will be. Or you can face the truth: you lost because you played the game wrong. Look at the choices you made. Every single one led you to this moment. You chased pumps without understanding what you were buying. You listened to random Twitter accounts instead of thinking for yourself. You ignored risk management because you thought, “This time is different.” You held bags deep into a downtrend, telling yourself it would bounce. You had no exit strategy, no discipline, just pure greed disguised as conviction and now you’re paying the price. Good. Feel that pain. Let it sink in. Let it burn into your mind so deeply that the next time greed tries to control you, you remember exactly what it cost you last time. Because if you don’t fix yourself now, you will repeat the exact same cycle again. And then what? Will you still be making excuses in 2029? Will you still be saying, “If only I had sold,” or “If only I had bought earlier”? At some point, the problem isn’t the market, it’s you. So what do you do now? You stop lying to yourself. You take a piece of paper and you write down every single mistake you made. Not in your head, on paper. Physically write it. The trades you shouldn’t have taken. The profits you didn’t secure. The leverage you abused. The exits you ignored. The times you let emotions dictate your decisions instead of logic. Write it all down, and then look at it. That list? That’s why you lost. Not whales. Not influencers. Not “bad luck.” You. Now you have a choice. You can ignore this and hope things magically improve next time or you can break the cycle. You can choose to never make these mistakes again. That means risk management isn’t optional, it’s your foundation. It means greed no longer controls you, you take profits when you should, not when you “feel” like it. It means emotions have no place in your trades, you have a strategy and you stick to it. The market owes you nothing. It doesn’t care how much you “need” to win. It rewards discipline and punishes arrogance. This cycle, some people walked away rich, and others walked away broke. The difference? One had a plan, the other had hope. Next cycle, you get to decide which one you’ll be. Fix your game, or get played again.