Tag: psychology

What does it feel like to lose a lot of money (quickly)?

Here is a Quora question that I got in the personalized weekly newsletter.  I never had anything close to a lot of money, but I’m pretty sure that if a miracle happens and one day I do, I’ll lose them all pretty quickly.  Thus, I was vaguely interested in the answers.  However, the answer by James Altucher (most voted) was way more than I expected.

Then Internet stocks started to go down. This is ridiculous, I thought. The Internet is here to stay. I knew nothing about stocks or valuations or anything resembling rational thought. I doubled down. Then quadrupled down. Then 8-upled down.

From June 2000 until September, 2001 I probably lost $1 million a month. When anyone says, “this is ridiculous”, that’s code for, “I’m about to lose a lot of money”.

I couldn’t stop. I was an addict. I wanted to get back up to the peak.

I wanted to be loved. I wanted to have $100 million so people would love me.

I was the worst idiot. Writing this now I feel like slitting my wrists and stomach. I had 2 kids.

I felt like I was going to die. That zero equals death. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. I had lost all my friends. Nobody returned calls. I would go to the ATM machine and feel my blood going through my whole body when I saw how much was left. I was going to zero and nothing could stop it. There were no jobs,  there was nothing.

Read the whole thing.  It’s fascinating and impressive.

What’s in the room? A fear. Or two.

OK, you gonna hate me for this, but I just couldn’t resist and read one more question from the The Daily Post.

You’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room.

I wanted to do a post like that for a while now.  But thinking of my fears takes away for a long time and then I don’t know how to connect them all,  with which one to start, and how to finish.  And on top of that I get really scared thinking of all my fears.  But, if I think in terms of the room, and I’m locked in there with my greatest fear, all of a sudden I see … just me.  And that explains at least four big fears that I have:

  1. Fear of loneliness.  That is probably my greatest fear.  I am not comfortable with myself for long periods of time, and I constantly need people around me.  I’d rather have the worst possible people next to me, than nobody at all.
  2. Fear of myself.  This one comes and goes.  But when it comes, it’s pretty scary, and, difficult to explain.  But I do fear myself sometimes.  For most time, I can control myself pretty well.  (Feel free to disagree.)  However once in a while I get into that mode where I have an almost out of body experience, watching myself from aside, doing something crazy.  It’s almost never good or bad, just stupid.  But having no control of it is scary.
  3. Fear of dentists.  And I hear you jump up immediately, screaming – YOU ARE NOT A DENTIST!!! And you are right, I am not.  But remember that this whole thing is hypothetical.  There’s me locked up in the room with my greatest fear.  Well, I am afraid of dentists.  I’ve had more than a fair share of bad experiences and something snapped.  I think I might be so afraid of them, that even if I become one, I’d still have the fear.  And given that fear #2, I might just once have an uncontrollable desire to fix my own teeth.  Isn’t that scary?
  4. Fear of the dark.  Yeah, remember that room?  Someone switched off the lights and closed the shutters too, so it’s pitch black.  That alone wouldn’t throw me into a panic attack anymore – I used to be afraid of the dark a lot more when I was kid – but given all those other fears in the room, I would be pretty miserable.

OK, enough, as I said before, these thoughts get me scared.  I should get of the Internet now and go hide somewhere with people and lights, and without dentists.

What are you afraid off?  What would be in that room of yours?  Answering ‘you’ is cheating. :)

Paris syndrome

BBC reports:

A dozen or so Japanese tourists a year have to be repatriated from the French capital, after falling prey to what’s become known as “Paris syndrome”.

That is what some polite Japanese tourists suffer when they discover that Parisians can be rude or the city does not meet their expectations.

Oh, really?  These people should steer clear of Russian then.  If they need psychiatric help after Paris, they will probably just drop dead on the streets of Chelyabinsk…