When everyone you know says the opposite and it's against your ideas, you should always listen to your inner voice, do your own research and act accordingly.
Unpopular opinion: if everyone you know says the opposite of what you think, you should look pretty fucking carefully at what you believe and try to figure out if it's true, or if you're fooling yourself.
I'd say, for me, it would be the concept of getting away from FIAT and banks. Still working on this, but to get into the mindset where you want to get out of the system was the hardest.
Ideally yes, for sure, but of course not easy. This is a long process and not going to happen over night. I have no idea what that last step is, but one day, I'll get there.
The point of my post was not that I fully exited, but that the decision to go on that journey was what challenged me the most. It was the hardest to grasp the reality that the current system is just broken and to make a conscious effort to move away from it. In a same way for a working person who only worked in a safety of a steady job to decide to start their own company (a very hard decision to make psychologically).
I've been a 100% believer in Bitcoin since the fall of 2011. In the beginning every little piece of good news made me think the world would catch up with my view of bitcoin. Then after the fall of Gox I thought when a few new exchanges took it's place they'd see. Then when we hit a new ATH, I thought they'd see. Then the china ban, then the ICO market, then the next craze and the next fad, etc. So many times I got my hope up thinking this time it's going to happen.
Now I'm quite Jaded. When something like Blackrock filing an ETF happens I yawn and think, so? How will that get the vast masses of stupid people to finally open their eyes... They've never even heard of blackrock!
I still think bitcoin will be the world's main currency one day in my lifetime, but I now think it has nothing to do with people understanding it, and everything to do with their existing currencies failing them so they have no choice. That isn't going to happen this year. Maybe not even this decade.
ETA: But seriously, doing your own research instead of just taking someone’s word for something is crucial. It helps you learn, make better decisions, and take control of your life.
Probably patience and accepting difficult and great things don't happen over night. Sometimes it is easy to get caught in the hype cycles and projections of billions of users and multimillion USD price predictions but it is best to focus on one foot in front of the other. Stack sats daily, keep learning, keep sharing your knowledge with others. The rest will take care of itself.
For me it was stacking sats and belief in bitcoin.
I dont even flinch now at dips. BTC has treated me better than Fiat and it makes me smile looking at my stack now, knowing that no one can take these savings from me
There's not point in getting preoccupied with convincing everyone around you to adopt bitcoin. Instead, just build rapport and value with people who have already adopted bitcoin.
That the resistance to change is a very powerful force.
Most people prefer to use a known system that is not a good fit for them, instead of considering new and better ways that are unfamiliar to them, but could improve their lives.
Sunk cost fallacy. I think there is something to it, not always just a fallacy.
Example I was thinking about today: Uprooting one's family and moving to a new place, building out relationships with new locals, planting new roots. Will they accept you as well as they did in your previous community? Maybe you are in a different age group by now and haven't yet figured out how to effectively find friends. Maybe you have to relearn the seasons and what grows best if you move far enough.
That may be part of an evolutionary biology explanation for why sunk cost is something we might overcompensate for.