#10 – Finance EP1 – What do you learn from losing $40 mil EUR?

Summary

Now suddenly a group of dwarves comes and steals half of it! Needless to say, you are furious! So what do you do? Will you fly after the dwarves and breath fire everywhere — leaving the rest of your treasure unguarded. Or, do you stay and make sure to guard the remaining half to the best of your ability?

Transcript

[00:00:01] Oh, hi. And M. here. Imagine you’re a dragon and you’re guarding this big pile of gold. Now, one day a couple of dwarves comes and they steal half of your gold. What do you do to shaefer us chase after the dwarves trying to get your money back? Would you stay and guard gold that it’s still yours? This episode is going to be on finers because me, a male and the founder of great Eric Bergman have lost quite a bit of money recently, about half of our net worth. So we want to dig into the emotional aspects of losing money. How do you do an act when life seems to hate you and how can you still make good financial decisions moving forward? This would be the first of many episodes on finance where we learn how to set our emotions aside, hopefully to make wise decisions with a goal that is still in our driver’s seat.

[00:01:24] All right. Good morning, Eric Berger. How are you doing today? Good morning, my friend. Well, today I’m I’m concerned, but other than that, I’m good.

[00:01:35] There’s a lot of things going on right now that I’m battling with. And we’ll dig into a few of those things in a moment.

[00:01:42] Yeah, we will. We will dig into them. Cause to me right now, you’re in a situation where you’re almost like. Like a dragon. And we’re going to talk about finance today. And imagine you’re a dragon and you are on this big pile of gold. You’re guarding it because it’s. That’s what dragons do, apparently. And now some pesky dwarves come and they steal half of your gold. You’re furious as this dragon. Now, what do you do? Do shakes after the dwarves trying to get your gold back? Or do you stay and guard the gold that you still have? What would you do if you were a dragon?

[00:02:28] Now, I’m this concerned dragon, and I don’t know what you would call the procrastinate this decision.

[00:02:36] Be furious. I would puke some firearms on innocent people around me because I’m concerned and angry at the world.

[00:02:45] And yeah, I wouldn’t be able to really wrap my head around it. I would need something to soothe my frustrated stomach.

[00:02:53] So being a dragon and being a human is kind of similar then. And I’m bringing this up, this metaphor up, because you have been facing some financial challenges. And I of course, I know you are better off than most people, but you’re still have lost quite a bit of money recently because of the stock market. What exactly have happened?

[00:03:20] Yes. So I’m tremendously well off. But that aside, during the past 12 months or so, I’ve lost about half of my personal wealth on the stock exchange and I’ve done that. I’ve been having a very risky investment strategy in general, I’ve been in more or less hundred percent on the equity market in shares and.

[00:03:50] I’ve always known that I’m supposed to do something else, but I’ve kind of been.

[00:03:57] Afraid…

[00:04:02] Starting to make decisions because decisions can be wrong. So I’ve procrastinated making any decisions, even though I know I should have done that. And now the universe is showing me a mirror and saying, Hey, Eric, you’re an ass. You should have dealt with this. And it’s I’ve chosen to look the other way for the better part of this year, even though the stock prices of my investment hasn’t been going down significantly and it’s first now in the last couple of weeks that I’ve actually like 12. Eric, you need to step into this. You need to suck it up and take responsibility. And that’s how we ended up doing during this episode because we realized how much money can be a. Concern even in my situation.

[00:04:51] Yeah, and it’s I know you to be a pretty logical guy and you’re using you’re using analysis in a lot of your decisions and you would think that someone like you would use that kind of logic in finance too. But I can tell right now and I’m hearing your voice that this is a very emotional situation for you and you’re battling with it sounds like you’re giving yourself some shame here for not acting differently.

[00:05:28] For sure there is. There is a lot of emotions going on with us, and I’d I’d love to dig into that a bit later. And I’d like to have you more involved with this as well. Can we start with just sharing some of your history with with money? How did you end up where you are? And I’ll share some of my story as well.

[00:05:48] Sure. And like it mentioned in the introduction, this would be a serious on finance where me and Eric learn because we realize we don’t know as much as it would benefit us to do in finance. So we want to learn over a miniseries so that we can make wiser decisions in the future. So to give a history of my situation, I’m why I want to do this and why I think you and I are good tag team partners in this project.

[00:06:20] Is that. Well, my history. It’s was. Let me put it this way imagine you are in the goldrush, but somewhere up in Canada, right? Probably in the eighteen hundreds or something. And you think you’re going to shoot people if you wanted to. Of course. As well as I do. I still do. I still do. I mean, I don’t know. But they have been Canada. Hill is about gold. People get rich. And back then most people they got involved in the gold rush did get rich. And when I was 16, 17, I heard similar rumors. But this time it wasn’t gold, it was online poker. And this was around 2005. And the pool poker boom or gold rush had just started. I was 6 17 and we were just about to graduate from school. And I was lucky enough to have a big talent for this game of online poker. And I’m proud to say that I also had the discipline to execute. So from 16 and the last six years or so after that, I played all the time and I did really well. So I’m lucky. I’m proud to say that I also have a good financial start to my life. I managed to buy my apartment without any loans and I made more money than that. And I put that all in in the stock market.

[00:07:55] So what have you learned during this? What could you have done differently?

[00:08:01] Well, there were a couple of downsides with this situation. And I guess the one big mistake that I made is that I have had a very high burn rate throughout my life. And to be honest, rate, burn rate. I spend a lot of money. And to be honest, that kind of made sense because, yes, I was arrogant with money for sure.

[00:08:29] And now you want to explain it like it makes sense when it actually doesn’t it?

[00:08:33] Well, it does make sense because this was the perfect setup for someone to get arrogance with money. I’m a teenager. And at this point, for the first couple of years, I made around. Four hundred euros an hour. Tax free. And what that. And there was no limit to how much I could play. I could play whenever I want because this was a line. So when you’re in that situation, imagine you’re going to buy a sofa. The costs two thousand euros. You can go around looking a whole day at three different shops to find a sofa. That is the best value for your money. Or I could play poker for one or two hours and make more than I would find. What I would make finding a better sofa. So it just never made in a sense to look at prices. Hence a very high burn rate. The problem now is that twelve something years later, I have spent more than half of what I made from poker. So if I could go back, I would have liked a lower burn rate. And another mistake I made is that. I didn’t diversify my risks at all. I had way too much money in an apartment and that arrest in stocks, which I didn’t realize how risky that was because I was used to the swings of online poker. Back then I was winning or losing twenty thirty thousand euros almost every day. I was playing sort of swings at the stock market, seemed like nothing to me, even though they were probably unacceptable high. So those two things spending too much, not realizing the risks I was exposing myself to.

[00:10:22] Yes, we’re in somewhat similar situations where you made your money from poker and kind of lost half of your assets or your potential assets. But a lot of it in terms of spending.

[00:10:36] And well, my financial story is that I took a company to the stock exchange. I made a lot of money from that. And I didn’t really think things through. I think that I’ve been looking at this as the gold rush as well, in a sense that this is always going to go up. Everything’s going to common. If I choose not to think about the downside, the downside doesn’t really exist. And I can’t imagine that’s a situation where.

[00:11:06] Where a lot of people end up regardless. The amount of money, but when investing and doing these kind of things, it’s very easy to see see it that way and taking it from from that perspective and wanting to take higher risk. And most common is probably in the housing market, as you mentioned, that you bought your apartment, that it’s very common that you buy a property because property is always going to go up. And especially in Sweden, the prices are insanely high and the mortgage rates are even even higher. Yeah. And just bringing that concern into it.

[00:11:42] Yeah, a tricky situation here, but I haven’t really thought about this before. Is that you and I probably have made the highest hourly rate when we are in our twenties. We most likely will never make that kind of money again in our lives. But when you’re in your 20s and you make that kind of money, it seems very likely that you would keep making that kind of money for the rest of the year. It’s very difficult to conceive that I’ve reached my my peak in terms of income.

[00:12:14] It feels like we were sports stars. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I can see myself being slapped on foot. Football player, you know, you can see that.

[00:12:26] Yeah, I think that’s it’s a very valid point. And I.

[00:12:31] I’m not sure. As you mentioned, I give myself a lot of shame for these decisions that I didn’t step back and realize, realize the risks that I was taking and how I’m doing that, and now I’m paying the bill for that and. Maybe I’m too hard on myself in how I’m feeling about this, because at the end of the day, I’ve been in my 20s and trying to take responsibility for decisions that I haven’t really known that much about.

[00:13:01] So like you said, let’s explore how you feel about this a little bit later. But just to map out what other mistakes you feel like you’re made.

[00:13:15] So it ties into these emotions and these things, but one of the mistakes I’ve made is that I’ve been far too emotionally attached to to my investments. I’ve been far too emotionally attached to the thought of a growth. My ego has been attached to the thought of becoming a billionaire. That’s in Swedish kroner, though I was fairly close to that. And that’s I took a higher risk than was reasonable just because it would sound cool to say that I’m a billionaire, which is like a.. Is it worth it?

[00:13:50] Probably not.

[00:13:51] Mm hmm.

[00:13:53] And is it these are these are all mistakes I did. I think the biggest mistake is. Not even trying to get more knowledge, so I didn’t read any books about investments. I spoke to a friend who knew a lot. That’s pretty much the only thing I did.

[00:14:10] I had about 2 different advisers from banks and stuff and I didn’t trust any of them because they gave quite shitty first advice. But I didn’t try to find a third one or fourth one or first one someone else could actually trust.

[00:14:25] Why having two? I have to find experts.

[00:14:32] I think that there are two reasons. First one being that my first impressions of the first two advices I had was bad. So I felt like I’m not gonna be able to trust anyone else. And I think the second one is, is fear, which kind of ties in to not trusting them. One of my biggest fears and I can’t imagine that’s quite as universal is the fear of being ripped off. I hate doing a bad deal in anything. I hate feeling that someone outsmarted me and being with a financial advisor. It’s very, very common that they have a commission on the things that I buy, which is basically an adviser is a seller. Innocence and the. The knowledge would be very split. Charity will be very clear that the adviser knows shitloads more about whatever it is he’s trying to sell me or not than I do. So there is a very uneven balance here, which means that the risk of me being screwed over is a lot bigger than if the knowledge balance was simpler. So I think the fear of being ripped off the feeling of.

[00:15:55] I think I felt a bit emasculated in these situations. I felt like I should know this should be better at this. I shouldn’t be this smart guy because I made all this money. And then I’m sitting on the other side of the table with a guy like this and I feel scared.

[00:16:18] And it makes sense to feel that way. I think they do get a commission. So it’s not obvious to me that they want what’s best for you. That’s a big reason why I didn’t ask an experts either. I was trying to read a little bit and by fairly good stocks. And I know you’ve done the same, but not anywhere near what occurred.

[00:16:38] Now I know for sure. So that’s you know. That’s for sure. And.

[00:16:47] I mean, looking back, I I I did this with open eyes. It’s like I know I’m supposed to read these books right now. I know I’m supposed to consider this. I know I’m supposed to talk to people and get this knowledge. And yet I didn’t.

[00:17:05] So it’s kind of like I know that this is the wrong direction that I’m walking right now, but I’m just going to continue because I’m too stubborn to ask anyone for the way.

[00:17:16] So when you know, you should go, your your mind knows it, but you’re not acting on your knowledge to me. Then you have some kind of emotions that is preventing you from making what you know is making what you know is in your best interest. Yeah. So what what do you think prevented you from from changing?

[00:17:41] I think a big part of this was that I had negative associations to business in general over the last couple of years. I worked far too much in in Catina, my previous company, and I lost the will of exploring these things. And I think that if I started to look into this, I would then really need to commit to it. It was a big, big project and I would also have to take responsibility for the actions that I made. So it felt easier not to make a decision because then I couldn’t make the wrong decision, which is a completely wrong assessment. But at least I didn’t really need to take responsibility to myself about making this or that decision if the decision was wrong. So if I were to have sold shares and then it would have gone up a lot, then is like, yeah, that would have sucked more than I could really. At the time, I imagined that it would go down and how that would feel.

[00:18:51] So, yeah, I was I was blind of this image of whatever billionare would mean.

[00:18:57] And yet at the same time, I I didn’t I knew that if I do this, I need to make this, this and this decision and I don’t know what decisions to make. And that held me back.

[00:19:11] Mm hmm. Yeah. So what kept you from learning more about these things?

[00:19:22] It sounds similar.

[00:19:25] A combination of not wanting to pay experts and then a bit of laziness that’s not wanting to learn and a bit of. Thinking that I knew more than I did and hoping that in best investing would be easier than I thought. And I know I wasn’t aware of the risks and my risk tolerance was way too high from having played poker too. So I knew that stocks are very risky, but I also knew to have a high return of investments. I thought that’s kind of fine. That suits my personality.

[00:20:08] Yeah, yeah, I think I did the same thing. I didn’t even. I just compared things with what I’ve done in the past. And then I put myself on a ridiculously high risk rate and that worked well for a while, which made me pick up the risk even further rather than taking my money off the table and lowering the risk.

[00:20:30] And I think a fallacy for someone being in our position is that it’s easy to over estimate how.

[00:20:40] How easy it would be to make the money back if they were lost. Yeah.

[00:20:47] Yeah, I completely agree with that. So now you lost about almost half your net worth, I guess, and you probably when you were at the highest point, you’ve probably thought, well, if I lose half, I can make it back.

[00:21:00] Yeah.

[00:21:02] Yeah. Challenge with this is also identifying myself with that money. I’m a person that have this much that kind of becomes an identity for myself. And as you say, it’s it’s easy to then misunderstand how easy it is to win that money money back. Yeah. How much money do you identify yourself with that you’re actually having in terms of what you have right now?

[00:21:33] Well, I’ve been standing pretty much still now for the last two years. Some pretty much where I am actually. But it has taken some time. And what you’re describing now is reference points. And I think you are very challenging part of.

[00:21:55] Of finance. So let’s use a metaphor, because this is a key concept when playing poker. Let’s say you play in a tournament and you have a poker tournament and you have a million chips in this tournament. You’re leading the tournament. Now let’s say you lose a huge pot. So you’re down to 50000 chips. So you only have a fraction left of what you originally had. That could very well be a very, very good situation. But now, since you used to being the big guy and the big guy is the boss of the poker table, now with those fifty thousand, you might be taking similar risks. That is acceptable if you’re a big player, not allowing yourself to mentally change to the circumstance you’re actually at right now. So I think in your situation, it’s kind of similar. It’s not easy to change and make decisions as if you’re in the reality or now. Now when your stack is smaller because your reference points is still at your maximum.

[00:23:04] Ok. Let’s see if I can teach pack this in the USA. So let’s say I would have been a small player all the time at the poker table. Yeah. And I’m in the same situation and I have fifty thousand chips. Yes.

[00:23:16] At this time I’m playing very cautiously and that’s what’s good for me at this time. Yes. And I’m probably quite happy with my stock because it means that I’m still alive in the tournament. DiMaggio’s doubled from twenty five thousand to fifty. Yeah. I would be super excited about that. How much would you like to hear about your stock? Oh, yeah.

[00:23:36] I would care a lot about my money because it was hard earned in a sense. And if I just went down from a million to 50, I would take insanely risks because I’m identifying myself with that big guy that I was two minutes ago. And I don’t care at all about the money, even though it’s the same amount of money.

[00:23:53] Yeah. Fifty thousand is nothing for a million stock. Yeah. And that’s fifty wants to get up to a million again quicker than you would if you’re like a small patient. Know.

[00:24:05] Yeah, I think that makes makes sense and I can definitely relate to that in my my life today.

[00:24:12] I can add in this seems very logical, but it’s hard as when you’re playing poker. Being able to not be stuck at reference points is one of the hardest skills when you’re being a professional to me.

[00:24:27] Yeah, I can really relate to that now as well. That one of the reasons why I don’t want to sell certain shares are that I’m identifying with the value they used to have. So it’s a similar thing here that let’s say I bought a share for hundred dollars and it might be a really shitty thing to keep it and it’s down to $50 and everything within me says, OK, maybe this shouldn’t be here, but I’m emotionally attached to that. It used to be one hundred and it’s a similar situation. However, if I would have bought it for 50, I might have sold it. So it’s yeah, I can relate to that and I can see that being a problem.

[00:25:07] There are so much emotions being tied into this. This is so what’s what’s been going on as might might be the main part of my money is still tied up in my old company in Katrina. And a year ago it was valued at one share was about 150 kroner. And now it’s down to 60. And I’ve been I’ve been very emotionally attached to this company since it’s my baby. In many ways. I’ve been emotionally attached to the idea of making even more money. And I do believe in the company. I think it’s a very good company and they’re doing a lot of great things at the same time.

[00:25:47] It’s never financially OK to have that many eggs in one basket if you’re not knowing everything about it. And I’m not involved in the company and I haven’t worked there for years. I don’t have any numbers on anything. I don’t know anything that the market doesn’t know.

[00:26:05] And I’ve been knowing this all the time, like, OK, Erik, a logical, correct decision right now, even though I believe in the company, I believe in the future, is still to take down the risk.

[00:26:17] And I just haven’t done that because I’m so emotionally attached to it, even though every book I’ve read, every I think that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t read up more on this either, because I know they will tell me to do something that is emotionally hard. So every book tells me, spread your risks, diversify. Do this. Do that. Don’t tap everything like this. And I’ve been so emotionally involved with this decision that I haven’t wanted to listen to that. I don’t want anyone to tell me to sell because this is my baby and this my image. And now I’m so attached to the idea of being worth this and that much as well. And so I haven’t really lost money in this because while I founded, the company started at zero. But once again, it’s relative to where it used to be. And I guess that’s similar to the poker stack as well. Let’s say you have fifty thousand, but you started with 10. You’ve actually five times more than you started with, but you’re still down to 5 percent of the million you had before. Yeah.

[00:27:22] Yeah, this is it’s challenging and tricky. So how do you deal with as when you’ve been losing money in poker or in investments? What’s what’s been your go to solution for? Dealing with.

[00:27:39] Well, one thing that gives me some kind of peace is that.

[00:27:47] I think these are opportunities in life where good decisions can make the biggest difference. So it pays to be extra focus on being wise in these situations. So in poker, for example, when you’re winning, when everything is going your way, you win every pot. You’re so lucky. It’s very, very easy to play well also because it feels like everything you’re doing is right and you’re most likely doing the right things because your emotion. You’ve been flooded with good emotions, but then you’re in a downswing. You lost down to that 50000 stock. Everything. Everything’s going against you. You’re not getting any cards. And life is just seems to hate you. Those are the times when it’s the most difficult to make good decisions. And that is where you can really have an edge against other players because all everyone is struggling in these situations. But if you can be the one that is struggling the least, then that is where you can really have an edge.

[00:28:50] So I think this is the most important part of life, which is the lowest point of the curve, or at least in a downswing.

[00:29:00] Ok. So what you’re saying is when everything is going well in life, it’s easy to make the right decisions. Everyone knows you make politician your focus. You’re positive, you’re focused. You know, you’re in this state. And whenever things are going tough in life, that’s on the poker table or not. Yeah. This is where it’s so hard to make the right decisions. Few people evolution. Yes.

[00:29:26] So if you should focus on getting better at one of these skills, it’s probably easier to make an impact in your life if you get better at dealing with the downsides of things than making the maximum value out of the upsides. Yeah. So what what would you do to to make it easier to deal with the downsides of life? How how would you deal with us today and how did you deal with it back in the days? What? What I would have changed.

[00:29:58] I think very few people I’m surprised by how few even poker players are think like this because we call it a game, big game and see game a game is the very best you can play. See game. Mr. Very worst you can play and be game is everything in between. And most player focus almost only on increasing their A-game. They looked at super advanced situation and they tried to get better at what they are already good at. We’re probably the most value you can get is to look at your C game and try to raise that and remove the biggest mistakes that you’re doing. And I think the reason a lot of players don’t do that, at least not enough, is that it’s painful to look at your mistakes. So it’s easy to look at your sweet spots, but are you already doing well and that only focus there and not wanting to look at your mistakes? I think some of the biggest growths in life comes from a willingness to look at your mistakes a lot and not take it personally. But one thing to improve them improve your game.

[00:31:03] So if we were to translate this one to real life as well, it might make more sense to focus on curing whatever bad habits you have than pushing yourself to make the good habits even better.

[00:31:19] A lot of the time I think that is true.

[00:31:22] So it might make more sense to let’s say you want to get healthier. It might make more sense to aim to not have that super drunk a night every now and then where you just bench eat ice cream and drink five liters of vodka rather than polishing your salad to the perfect level the day you have that one.

[00:31:45] Yeah, because it feels awful thinking about the times when you have being a jackass, but thinking about the times when you have been great, when you had that, when you were really cool at that party or wherever, you made a really good decision that fits also. So it’s much easier to look at that. So I think the average person is for sure not looking enough at your mistakes. I was at a yoga class yesterday. And the teacher said something that relates to this. She said that in every position, all of you right now, you’re at your sweet spot. You’re in the position where it feels the most comfortable for you. But then how are you growing? Can you move out of your sweet spot and move in to where you are stretching? So what you said basically is all of you guys want to be at your A-game all the time. But how about you looking at a bit that your C game to see where your limits are?

[00:32:46] Ok. So I know that you’ve been you’ve been struggling a lot with downswings and losing money and feeling quite shitty outside of the poker table during the years. And I know that you’ve struggled a lot with this the last year as well. Yes. And I can see then that the importance of improving your sea game, but also the importance of improving your mental health in this situation, and I can feel that now that I’m struggling with this myself, where the loss of money have a big impact on my mental wellbeing and how I relate to you, how I relate to my my fiance and people around that. What have you learned in terms of how. How to deal with that side of things. How to. Deal emotionally well with with losing money.

[00:33:40] When when I was 20 or so and I started having big downswings, like, imagine losing 75 percent of your net worth in six months. I had no way at all to deal with that. So what I did is I just shut off emotionally completely. I didn’t want to feel anything. I didn’t even celebrate when I won because I realized if I celebrate when I win, I will have to feel sad when I lose super cop for a couple of years. I turn myself into a robot and that made me make logical decisions. But I also got I got numb in life, like really no life from that poker strategy. I felt way less happiness in general. So. It was a process to open myself back up from that. And my approach now is that instead of not instead of not wanting to feel the pain, I want to get better at feeling the pain. And I see the pain as a messenger, as opportunity for spiritual growth. So when I’m being pushed, I’m looking at that when I’m being pressured. I’m looking at that as life, making me more resilient to pain. And I want to be in there more.

[00:35:04] Can you elaborate a bit on that? I’m not following. OK.

[00:35:12] I see I see emotional pain as a way to grow spiritually, and I go into it more and I’m making my nervous system used to, it’s OK. I feel a lot of anxiety right now. Can I sink into that feeling more and be present with it instead of trying to distract myself? And that makes me more resilient to anxiety.

[00:35:40] Ok.

[00:35:41] So before, if you felt anxiety, you wanted to distract yourself from that emotion and push it away and not feeling it. Yes. And not not relating to it. And that made you numb. And was a good thing in terms of playing poker, but not a good thing in in life because you got numb from everything else as well. And today you’re doing the opposite. So if you feel anxiety, you step into that feeling. You try to really feel it, focus it on the standard, I guess. And that may change your perception of what it means. So I guess before you are like, this is a bad thing. I don’t want to feel it now. It’s a good thing. But it feels bad. But I the more I focus on it, the more I can learn from it.

[00:36:33] Exactly. You can’t burn a fire like that analogy.

[00:36:40] Ok. So let’s take my my my perspective on this now and where I am. So I’m feeling shitty over over these kind of things.

[00:36:51] And I do not feel that I have a great way of dealing with it because it’s impacts a lot of things around me.

[00:36:58] And I’m still not I’m still too emotionally attached to this to make rational diversification decisions of spreading risks. I’m still in a way too high risk and I understand that, which I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than not understanding it because I’m still not acting on it and I’m not sure if I will anytime soon.

[00:37:20] But if I if I do what we’re doing now, then I’m actually talking about this pain, I’m feeling this pain and I’m trying to learn from this pain. Not sure how to learn from this pain. At least I’m aware of it. Instead of pretending it’s it’s just Candyland and moving on, know, distracting yourself.

[00:37:42] Yeah, I think it keyword you said two times now as you tried to understand it. And I think when you can go to the core of something inside of you is preventing you from making decisions, you know where it’s in your best interest. And if you can get down to that core and understand what is happening, that can be turned into a principle that can be turned in to you being a stronger version of yourself, that can make a wiser decision next time. And in a sense, to me, that is what that is what life is about. But it’s the gift of you being pressured. So, I mean, life is going to pressure you anyway. It’s up to you how much you learn from it. And I think being in a situation like this and having the attitude that. All right. This feels horrible, but it doesn’t need to feel good for me to grow spiritually and as a person from this. So I can use this circumstance to get the most advantage out of it. And I think when at least for me, when I go from wanting outcomes to change, to instead wanting to experience each moment that as much as possible and learn from it, I think then there is meaning even in adversity.

[00:38:56] And then you I think the more you can become a friend of adversity. I think the more harmonious your life will become welcoming it, even because to me, that is where most of the growth is coming from. And it would be a shame to miss it.

[00:39:14] So I could look at this as instead of just feeling the pain of of loss, I could see it as the value of of a lesson in a sense, and the value of life and seeing this as this is here to.

[00:39:31] To help me and for me to understand it, yeah, I think that is a beautiful perspective. I mean, if you can live your life through the lens of everything is here to help me. I think even the darkest moments can feel meaningful even. And they don’t need to feel good to be meaningful. They really don’t. I think an illusion is that things can only be good for me if they feel good. And I think with that perspective, we’re really limiting our our journey here.

[00:40:04] Ok. So we’re walking down the path of how to emotionally deal with this and and how to take this this on and learning from it. If we’re looking at this from a more, more practical perspective of, OK, we are now here, we we are dealing with emotions, but we are also evaluating what went wrong and seeing what could we do differently. I feel I feel this is probably what you’ve learned the most about from poker.

[00:40:35] You looked at this mistake and then you evaluate it and and you’re trying to change something. Would you say that’s one of the main things that you’ve taken from from poker then, and that you haven’t quite applied your financial situation yet?

[00:40:53] I would say that is that is correct. Yes, I think analyzing your place afterwards in a study group is is crucial to learn. And that is kind of what we want to do now. We want to create a small study group to look at our mistakes and look at how can we play different moving forward.

[00:41:14] And could you explain what we intend to do in this little study group that we have set up?

[00:41:24] So the intention isn’t quite clear yet.

[00:41:26] I think one of the things we want to do is make making finance studies more fun learning in this kind of format. Together, we will learn a lot from each other and podcasting about whatever mistakes we’ve made. I think is is a valuable tool for learning ourselves, for sharing whatever things we have. And personally, I feel, yes, this conversation is it’s a bit of therapy for me about dealing with these emotions and understand this. For me, what I really like to learn in general is a much, much wider understanding of risk and diversifications. Basically, I’ve told myself share’s is the only way to go on the stock market and I’ve haven’t even opened the door on the other things to understand what they are.

[00:42:15] It’s just been ide’s boring. It’s low interest. It’s blah blah blah. It’s complicated. It’s expensive. It’s and I’ve just made up all of these false truths that I’ve no idea of their truth. I don’t do anything about anything else. It’s like my way of risk. Diversification was okay. Let’s put some money into crypto and that didn’t go so well. So that’s my risk. Diversification was oh let’s increase the risk by 100 percent. And that went to the crapper as well. So word of advice. If you have a time machine, don’t go back to early 2018 and invest in investing crypto. You will lose your money. So that’s what I did. Shitty advice. Well, good advice if you have a time machine. But I don’t. Unfortunately, someone has a time machine. Please give me a go. I will make you rich by going back in time and buying crypto.

[00:43:08] So this is.

[00:43:10] My perspective on this is learning these kind of things. Feeling that, OK, now I’m actually I’m stepping up to the board here and saying, OK, I know I haven’t learned this. I haven’t learned that I haven’t done this. I’m not quite sure what these things are yet. But that’s the state we’re in right now. We’re focusing on these things. We’re learning these things. And then we’re gonna learn about these things to realize, OK, I’ve been emotionally attached to these things. It’s time to grow up. It’s time to spread risks, whatever. And even if we land on not spreading risks, even if we land on keeping this high risk perspective, then it’s a conscious decision. It’s not a procrastination thing. I think that’s at the core here.

[00:43:53] It hasn’t even been it.

[00:43:55] I think that I take pride in always making decisions. And that’s something that comes from poker, that it’s always better to make a decision than other decision, pretty much because if you’re not making any decisions in poker, just folding out and nothing’s gonna happen. A lot of the time, the worst decision is no decision. And that’s where I’ve been. I haven’t been actively saying I shouldn’t sell. I haven’t been actively saying I should sell. I’ve just refrained myself from any knowledge and haven’t made a decision because that’s felt easier.

[00:44:29] So, yeah, that’s my perspective on this little study projecting what’s what’s your take on these things?

[00:44:38] I just know that I spend a lot of time in front of a computer over the last year and I’ve been reading a lot of books over the last five years, and I realized that a way to learn that I really enjoy is to have conversations like this and to map out things together. So I’m sure if you and I do this together, the rate at which we would learn would be a multiplier of 10 20, I think. So I just feel very drawn to learning together and what we’re doing now as well as learning publicly too. So then we have the benefit of including others in our learning process. So to me, it’s obvious if you’re listening to this that me and Eric, we have a lot of blind spots and maybe you are seeing things clearly. Are you listening or seeing clear things clearer than we do? So if you have any suggestions for where we should get started learning about this, or if you can point out our blind spots to us, we would really appreciate if you email us at part of podcast. Great About.com. Do you have something you need help with at this point? From someone that might be listening.

[00:45:56] Right now, I’m the first place that I feel drawn to started is what Ray Dahl, you this is an investment hedge fund guru, is referring to as the all season’s portfolio.

[00:46:08] And he says a lot of things that doesn’t rhyme well with how I’ve seen things in the past. And that’s kind of when someone who I consider a really, really smart says something that I don’t agree at all with, then that feels like a good place for me to start, because he has probably understood something I haven’t. So anyone who considers that portfolio to be a really shitty option if they know about it or consider is a great option.

[00:46:38] I would love to hear more about that because that’s where where I feel drawn to starting even though I have a clear reason. Well, clear idea. What’s going to come out of it?

[00:46:49] Cool.

[00:46:51] I want to summarize what we have learned today. But before I do, you have something more you want to add to wrap this episode up?

[00:47:01] No, I don’t think so.

[00:47:02] Well, yeah, I’d like to.

[00:47:06] To say that if you in some way or not can relate to what we’re doing now. Please come back and listen and see what we learned. And please learn with us. I would I would love that. Yeah, me too. Yeah. So what have you learned today? I mean, wrap it up.

[00:47:25] I have learned that even though it’s painful, if I were a dragon, I’d probably stay and guard that pile of money, even though I would feel that they have stolen both half my cache and my pride. I see the.

[00:47:44] Strength in learning together and talk these things out because especially the emotional part. It’s so obvious to me when you’re talking right now that you cannot know what to do. But something is preventing you from doing so. So then we need to touch on the emotional aspect. And I like these kind of conversations for doing so. I. I have enjoying myself today. I am.

[00:48:14] What have you learned? I like what you said right now about losing half your money and maybe all of your pride. That’s kind of the dwarf steals your pride as well. I think that’s a key thing in this. I think it would be easier for me to take rational decisions and be less emotionally attached if I wasn’t a public figure, in a sense. It’s easier to to admit defeat if no one knows that you’re admitting defeat. But it’s harder to do it when when it’s in a public forum than with public forum can be just your friends as well. It doesn’t need to be the whole world watching. It’s like if you’re still in the game, you’re still in the game, even though it might be should a decision to be in the game. But you don’t need to accept the loss of pride.

[00:49:06] Yeah, yeah, that’s one of the things they take with me, and I think that I’m getting closer to the emotional connection to all of these things.

[00:49:14] It’s just been too much of a roller coaster to stop and think. And I like the idea of us learning these things together, exploring these things together and see where we end up with it. And hopefully we can look back at this podcast a couple of months from now or a year from now and say, Oh, Frick, we did a no shit. Now we know a lot. So we can go there and we can high five ups from the future and we’ll just take it from there.

[00:49:41] Mm hmm. That’s awesome. And another word for taking your pride is to take your ego away. And sometimes if someone is holding onto their ego, their pride. The universe had to squeeze a little bit to make that happen.

[00:49:57] And it can be painful, but I’m sure both of us would be dragons after this process is over. All right. Sure. Eric, today and for your listening, follow up on our final episodes, The Ice Show Schlock.