Avoid Being Proud After Achieving Some Success | Original
This is one of the easy mistakes I have made again and again. I often do well when I am the underdog. However, if I think I am kind of successful, then I will fall into a hole.
In my adult life, most of the time, I liked posting in WeChat Moments. That made me seek too much validation and care about the opinions of others too much.
And in investing, I have done this so many times: become too happy when an investment finally works, and then break my regular investing practice and start to suddenly invest more. So it raises my average price and quickly leads to losses if the market turns upside down.
After getting users for my product and receiving an investment, I started hiring employees and tried to delegate, wanting to switch from founder mode to manager mode. This decision cost my company half a million CNY—a significant loss for a 22-year-old in China.
And after securing a job working as a contractor for a big bank, and learning English well, I thought that I was going to thrive in international companies in China to avoid its declining domestic market, and that I should be able to carry 1.2 million in debt. I was wrong too.
These lessons hit very hard. The first time, about losing half a million in one year, I spent two years hiring 20 part-time engineers to do 50 software projects to cover it up. The second time, which I am still recovering from, it will probably take me 10 years to fix that due to the hard economy and my own inability to achieve the next level of excellence.
Avoid being proud after achieving some success. Keep a peaceful mind. The accidents in my life due to myself (body or mental) or external factors could probably happen at any moment.