The lows don’t mean you are loser.  To the contrary, they mean something else that is completely antithetical.  They mean you are pushing the envelope.  You’re learning from past mistakes.  The lows mean that you are at an inflection point.  The trick is not to see the pit you are currently trapped in as a pit.  Think of it more as a privileged vista in which to view the pathway laid out clearly in front of you.  See it as the base to build the foundation for your future success.  The beginning of a glorious adventure.

My hand is reached out to you.  Let me help you up.

There will be no actionable information in this blog post.  There will be no life hacks or back doors or budgeting tips. That’s not what you need today.  What you need to know right now is that I’ve been where you are.  Hell, I might even be there currently.  I’ve been through moments when others looked at me with envy, and others when no one even knew my name.

There is not a single one of us who hasn’t been dragged down by the lows.

Low markets

If you are brave enough to invest, you will lose.  Sometimes.  Sometimes so badly that you will crawl into a corner, ball your hands over your head, and shake back and forth in fear.  The ugly scenarios running through your mind will create the bleakest of futures.  You will see a life of poverty and pain.  Starvation and suffering.

You will ask yourself if you jumped too quickly, or did you leap too late. Did you buy too high?  Or sell too low.  Your brain will stumble upon algorithms and stock quotes, graphs and prospecti.  And you will fumble and sputter and sigh.

Don’t!   Take a breath, and do nothing for a moment.  The market is a finicky bedfellow.  The covers are just as likely to be pulled off as to be thrust back on.  If you are an investor and not a speculator, you bought the right kind of stuff in the first place.  So hold on.  Wait for Mr. Market to shimmy back into the right direction.

Low income

If you are like most of us, you will be both hired and fired at some point in life.  You will be the golden boy as well as the weakest link. Your new business may sink before it ever swims.  You may take the slow boat to China and yet triumph upon arrival.  Don’t give up!

Success is often just a few steps forward and to the right of failure.  You will never get there if you are not strong enough to push ahead and look both ways upon arriving at the next street.

There are very few billionaires who haven’t failed colossally at least once, or twice, or a hundred times.  You don’t have to be a billionaire, but you will have to learn how to fail.

Failure is the fertilizer of your future crops.

Low confidence

Your blog is on life support.  You watch the stats as a few visitors trickle in every day.   One by one.  There is no viral moment.  There’s no Rockstar Finance feature.  There are just crickets.  Words on a page.

Your words.  Your precious words.  Thoughts and ideas agonized over hours of hand-wringing and brow perspiration.  Writing is not natural for you.  So you grind away for millennia to pour your heart onto the screen.  A post, a page, a lousy template for some faceless Googlebot to rank, and categorize, and leave without even the kindly pause of human perception.

You write, and no one reads.  You are one of thousands.  Your passion burns quietly in a lonely room.

You are not a loser

The lows are just a part of life.  A part of investing and working.  Common among those who express their opinions on blogs or in other public forums. The answer is simple.

Continue.

Don’t give up.  The greatest enemy of failure is not intelligence, nor strength, nor even luck.

It’s persistence.

“DocG” is a physician who blogs at DiverseFI.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com