Your perspective and perception are key to everything.
Every bad decision I’ve ever made felt urgent at the time.
Every rushed investment.
Every emotional response.
Every decision I made because I believed I had to act now.
Urgency has a way of making you feel like slowing down will cost you something.
Sometimes slowing down is the only thing that saves you.
Back in 2020, I started taking Bitcoin seriously.
I was learning how to buy it, move it, store it, and hold it in my own wallet.
The person teaching me repeated the same warning constantly:
Double-check the address.
Make sure it can receive Bitcoin.
Do not rush.
Because once you send it, there is no customer service number. No refund. No undo button.
I heard him.
But I did not yet have conviction.
I copied the address.
Pasted it.
Looked at it.
Hit send.
Twenty minutes later, nothing showed up.
I checked the address again.
Then again.
Then again.
I knew.
I had sent 0.0468 BTC—about $1,000 at the time—to an address that would never send it back.
Today, that same Bitcoin would be worth roughly $4,000.
The money hurt.
What came next hurt more.
For two weeks, I searched forums and messaged people in the Bitcoin community, hoping somebody knew how to reverse it.
Some people tried to help.
Others laughed.
They called me careless.
They told me I had learned an expensive lesson.
I kept looking anyway.
I wanted somebody to tell me there was still a way out.
Eventually, I had to admit what I already knew.
It was gone.
I closed my laptop.
Tucked my tail.
And for almost two years, I did not want to hear the word crypto, let alone Bitcoin.
I did not walk away because I stopped believing in Bitcoin.
I walked away because I did not want to feel that careless again.
Looking back, I did not lose Bitcoin because I moved too slowly.
I lost it because I moved too fast.
A few weeks ago, I watched the same lesson happen in a completely different form.
My daughter Rose was rushing around. She wanted to get to her Create City project “on time.”
It was around 8:30 in the morning.
The event did not start until 2:40 that afternoon.
My wife had already read the email.
She understood the setup time, the schedule, and what the day required.
Rose only felt the pressure of needing to get there.
My wife told her:
“Rose, I came here for you. You do not need to rush. We have plenty of time.”
Nothing about the day changed.
Only Rose’s perspective changed.
From her view, she was behind.
From ours, she was early.
That is what perspective does.
It changes what feels urgent.
When you only see the next five minutes, everything feels like an emergency.
When you see the full scope, you can move with patience.
Your perception determines what you feel.
Your perspective determines how you respond.
Perception says:
“I am late.”
Perspective says:
“The event does not start for another five hours.”
Perception says:
“Hit send.”
Perspective says:
“Read the address one more time.”
Perception creates panic.
Perspective creates patience.
This is why leadership is difficult.
People can trust you and still struggle to follow your direction.
Not because they do not respect you.
Because they do not yet have enough conviction to understand what you see.
A child may trust a parent but still rush because they do not understand the full plan.
An employee may trust a leader but still question the process because they only see the task in front of them.
A person may listen to advice but still make a reckless decision because they borrowed someone else’s conviction instead of building their own.
The mentor who taught me about Bitcoin never told me to blindly trust him.
He told me to build conviction.
At the time, I thought he meant conviction about Bitcoin.
What he really meant was conviction about responsibility.
Borrowed conviction disappears under pressure.
Personal conviction stays.
Responsibility creates patience.
When you are responsible for the outcome, you stop reacting to every small moment.
You learn what actually matters.
You understand what can wait.
You become less emotional.
Less frantic.
More intentional.
Not because life becomes easier.
Because your perspective becomes larger.
Faith works the same way.
Faith without works is dead.
My wife and I had done the work.
We read the email.
We understood the timeline.
We knew what needed to happen.
That preparation gave us confidence.
Confidence produced patience.
Rose was not wrong for feeling rushed.
She had simply not fully connected to what she had already been told.
Most of us do the same thing.
We panic over situations we have already prepared for.
We rush decisions we have already thought through.
We forget the perspective we worked hard to build.
Every bad decision I have ever made felt urgent at the time.
That does not mean every urgent decision is bad.
It means urgency deserves to be questioned.
Before you move, ask yourself:
What am I not seeing?
What information have I ignored?
What have I already been told?
Am I acting from conviction, or panic?
Your perspective and perception are key to everything.
Expand them before you act.
Attack the day,
Drew
