Can you clean your way to success?

Do you sit on the sofa after a workday dreaming of some investment that would give you enough wealth to do what you want? Something that could save you from your lousy work, debt slavery, boredom and maybe even bring your ex back? That would probably require a quick rise of hundreds or thousands of percent on the markets. Which is of course possible, but what is the likelihood of achieving this while sitting on the sofa?

Before we answer this question we must go through the path that leads to achieving this dream. And it starts from the very sofa you are sitting on right now. Look around you: Do you see empty beer cans and a big pile of pizza boxes from a party a couple weeks ago? Are you confronted by a mountain of dishes in the kitchen? Are you out of coffee since you’ve postponed going to the store? Does the unsorted trash symbolize your life? If so, you are probably quite far from achieving your goal. Why so?

A normal Thursday: Clean your way to success, day 1

Imagine a situation where you’re home at 6:04 in the afternoon and hear about a new cryptocurrency project with a notable potential to succeed. However, to succeed the project would require favorable regulation to pass on a remote Pacific island. The decision would be announced tomorrow on Friday, but now on Thursday you receive a text message and stop dreaming. This means your phone is on and allows you to be distracted. Your old friend is coming to visit around 7:30 and asks you to join him to party. You forget your dreams for a while and head out. You also mention your potential investment to your friend.

You only had a couple drinks but soon the time is 10:00 and you have to get ready for the next workday. Your dream is still alive, but once again you’re distracted by a message from relatives coming to visit the next day. Your home is very untidy, so you stress about how to clean it before your relatives arrive. That would take at least three hours. You panic and manage to clean it by 1 in the morning. However, the next morning you get up at 7 and have slept less than usual.

A basic Friday: Clean your way to success, day 2

The next morning you wake up at 7:32, since you didn’t sleep well and failed to wake up to the first alarm. It also took you some time to fall asleep, so you actually only slept around 5 hours. Your workday starts at 8:00 and you have to rush to get there. You skip breakfast, since you need to be at work in time. And when you arrive at work you find out your coworker is sick, meaning you’ll have twice the work today. Now you are already tired and start to get annoyed. The morning goes fine, but in the afternoon you make some mistakes and need to fix them working overtime. Your boss also gives you loud feedback before you leave.

You get off work at 4:30 and remember your relatives are coming to visit at 5:00. Now you’re in a hurry just to get home, and you won’t even be able to serve them any coffee since going to the store would take more time. Then you get stuck in traffic, so you arrive home a little late. Your relatives are already waiting when you get there. You explain about being busy at work but still invite them over. Your relatives soon notice your tiredness and lack of coffee to offer. Eventually you decide to go to the store while they wait.

After waiting a while you finally start drinking coffee at 6:00. However, at this point your relatives have already started suspecting your life management skills and ask questions longer than expected. Finally they leave at 7:30. You get a chance to breathe, until your phone rings again. Now you have to explain the situation to your parents, who have been informed by your relatives and are also worried about you.

You can barely restrain yourself, and finally get off the phone at 8:30 in the evening. Despite being extremely tired you postpone sleeping and take a couple beers, since you’re really annoyed now.

Saturday: Clean your way to success, day 3

As Friday night turns to Saturday you keep drinking and reflecting over your bad day. You go to the bar, drink a few more and for some reason decide to angrily call your sick coworker at 4 in the morning before hanging up the phone.

The next morning you wake up in an unfamiliar place with vague memories of the night before. You also lost a ton of money since you decided to offer free rounds for “all your friends”. Saturday is spent drinking soda and eating pizza. Once again you start assembling beer cans and pizza boxes into towers in your apartment.

Your friends from yesterday call you again and ask you to party, You agree to go, since you’ve already reached the bottom. While getting tipsy you start explaining more about your idea to invest in “the next bitcoin” you read about two days earlier. The night prolongs and you waste some more money.

Sunday: Clean your way to success, day 4

Sunday arrives and you now suffer from a relentless hangover. You also can’t afford to invest in anything anymore, since all your extra money is spent. On top of all you remember to check the regulatory decision from Friday and find out it was positive.

You go to coinmarketcap to see how the price has reacted to the decision. And as expected, the project’s price has tripled in three days. You end up cursing your bad luck and asking why you didn’t invest.

A moment passes until your old friend from Thursday calls and thanks you for the investment tip. Now you feel jealous since you’ve helped someone else get rich but not been rewarded for your own work. The next caller is your employer. He asks if you should take a small break since your performance has recently been substandard. He also tells you your coworkers have reported you have an alcohol problem.

The next week: clean your way to success

The next week you get yet another call from your new friends, who invested on Sunday based on your tip. However, that was the peak of the year after which the price crashed 70% the next week. Your new friends curse you to oblivion claiming you recommended investing in some pyramid scheme.

So, what could have been done differently? A lot. In fact the aforementioned example mainly highlights that the main character’s life choices do not at the moment enable good profits or success. If investing is important in your own life, your own life should also be planned so it leaves time for investing. In the example ordinary problems escalated, which may have been caused by our main character’s…

1. Uncleanness

A simple visit by relatives ruined our main character’s investment plans. Money can’t be expected to walk into an unclean home. If your home is unclean, then most likely its inhabitants can’t focus either. This is because your brain needs a clean environment to work in the best way. A chaotic environment causes a chaotic state in our brain. A clean environment in turn enables clear thinking.

In other words our brain reacts to all stimuli around us. And if just the environment causes stress, how can we consider doing important investment decisions while stressed? It’s not possible, since research shows our brain shrinks during stress. This clouds our thinking. So why would we sabotage our own decision-making, if simple cleanness can lower our stress levels?

It’s also very easy to test cleanness in practice. Unclean environments enable certain microbes to thrive. This can also create a nest for different diseases in our homes. If we are constantly exposed to attacks by microbes, a prolonged stressful life situation can cause an illness in our body. This is because our weakened immune system can not protect us from outer attacks. It’s therefore worth keeping one’s own home nice and tidy to reduce stress and harmful results.

Investing on an ordinary level is very much a cleaning sport. Maybe money will also find its way to a clean home? It’s worth trying.

2. Lack of organizing skills vs. clean your way to success

We all have acquaintances with a hold over our life. They may drag you out or invite themselves over for coffee. However, your task is to organize your life so there is time left also for your dreams. In the example our main character could have told his old friend to meet later between 8:00-9:00.

The main character could also have skipped the event due to work. Friends will probably understand this. In the life of investing you can not be directed by others – or keep your phone open while studying investments. Otherwise you can never focus long enough to reach important decisions.

Your brain usually needs at least an uninterrupted time of 20 minutes to really focus on what you’re reading. If your friends doesn’t understand this, then you should understand that time is money. If you don’t have time to study your investment target before an important decision, you won’t have time to make profits either. Even an hour or a half per day is already a lot of time for studying investments.

And why doesn’t our main character tell his relatives to also come a bit later, such as 7:00? By estimating how much time you have and informing others you can save a lot of trouble. In the end you have to prioritize what you really want: To please others or realise your own dreams. Compromises are also possible, but it has to be on your terms.

We can also organize our upcoming workday. Even if we’re not in a leadership position, we still have to prioritize our ability to work and only then invest. Unless we of course have enough wealth to live on mere investment profits. In order to think about investing we have to constantly be in good physical condition to work. That means good sleep can not be sacrificed for something else.

As what comes to coworkers, they can not be controlled. You can only control yourself. If you haven’t made good profits on the investment markets yet you can at least make sure your earning logic is in order. You should never weaken your own ability to earn, since that would also ruin your investment dreams. Your social circle should understand if you spend a little less time with them than usual for a good reason.

This example included several situations in which our main character could have avoided being overly influenced by feelings. Life situations should not be blamed, since emotions are everyone’s own burden to handle. Unfortunately this is not taught in school. Maybe it should…

With handling emotions it’s central to confront them and not blame outer factors for situations one faces in life or on the markets. In conclusion everyone is responsible for letting the emotions one feels be a part of one’s life.

Others should not be blamed. Many speak about emotional control, but it’s more about being able to take the role of an observer for oneself. This means letting emotions come but not being driven astray by them. This can help notice how some emotions tend to escalate in our life. Emotions should not be given too much control, since they are only messages of how our body experiences situations in our environment. This is of course easier said than done.

If you follow the public behavior of the world’s best investors, they are almost always very calm and unprovoked by small matters. This is because they know unprocessed feelings tend to escalate with their own investment decisions. If one is not calm when making an important decision, feelings like greed, jealousy and anger can be unleashed with adverse effects.

If anything is certain on the investment markets, that is meeting the whole spectrum one’s own feelings whether they have been experienced earlier or not. If we don’t learn to confront our feelings in our own life they will escalate elsewhere. Someone may attribute a failure on the investment markets to bad luck, but often it is more about escalating feelings.

In our example bad luck is built specifically by different unprocessed feelings escalating. Confronting feelings of course takes time too. If we don’t have time to deal with feelings things tend to escalate. Feelings don’t need to be fully understood, but rather given space to be confronted and processed. This is not easy, but it’s worth remembering your feelings will escalate on the investment markets. Therefore your success on the markets often reflects your own life: Is your emotional life in balance?

This is how you better handle everyday life:

• • 1. Keep your environment orderly
    2. Organize time to succeed on the investment markets
    3. Do your work well so you can invest in the first place
    4. Learn to confront your emotions to better understand yourself and the markets

So the next time you sit on your sofa, make sure to clean your home so you can think clearly. Then take a calendar and organize your daily schedule so you have room left for studying investments and possibly profiting. And remember to keep your earning logic in order, since your plans can not succeed without sufficient resources.

Also get to know yourself and bravely confront the fears and feelings preventing you from achieving your dreams. This way you are already a step or two closer to your goal.

Hopefully these tips were helpful!

This article does not present any investment recommendations nor should it be interpreted as such. Gaining profits on the markets often requires deep-rooted knowledge and several years of experience.

The writer is a board member of cryptocurrency organization Konsensus Ry and has years of experience in different investment fields, including cryptocurrencies.