You have two reasons to read this article:

1: To have a good laugh at my expense, and learn from my mistakes. I'm about to share some really dumb decisions I've made. Enjoy!

2: To get an introduction to an opportunity that I am NOT selling. It’s a chance for you to win big but it’s not some get-rich bullshit game. It’s a paradigm shift happening in the world that you can take advantage of if you are willing to act on it now and not be as stupid as me.

Part one: Missed Opportunities and my idiot decisions.

People say you should live a life of no regrets. I think that’s dumb. If you never regret anything, how are you supposed to learn from your mistakes? You can’t let yourself off that easy. No, you don’t have to beat yourself up, but you do have to own up to the dumb things you’ve done and gain confidence and wisdom by acknowledging regret and acting on it.

Dwelling on the past is not productive, but you can look back and ask, “How could I have done that better?” -keep that answer in your pocket and move on. You can forgive yourself without letting yourself completely off the hook. Bottom line:

Own it.

Now for the fun part...

I’m going to share with you a few of the mistakes I’ve made. My hope is that you’ll read my story and think, “Man- what a moron! If this guy can figure out how to live a happy life then I should have no problem!” And you’re right. If I can grow into a place of self-actualization and lead a life of adventure and joy- you certainly can too!

The Set-Up.

Like most of you, I grew up in a “dysfunctional family”. I haven’t heard that term much in recent years. I think because we’ve all come to realize that we all come from our own little versions of fucked up situations. Some of us have it better than others, but no one has it easy.

I won’t go into the sordid details in this article (and it certainly wasn't all bad, some pretty great stuff in there too). All you need to know for now is that I was pretty poor, lived in a small isolated town that was a wasteland of little opportunity- I thought. And I dropped out of school with about a 9th grade level of education. I attended off and on through grade 10 or 11, but I fucked off so many of those years, they just promoted me so they wouldn’t have to deal with me. I was the young buck they were passing.

So just to make sure you’re set up here: Socially awkward loser with few friends, broken family, no money, no education and no good plans, in a podunk little village in the middle of nowhere. Got it? OK. Now that you’ve got a good picture of 17-year-old me, it will drive home just how stupid the first couple of mistakes were.

Facepalm #1

Don’t think this is my first mistake. It’s just the first example of COUNTLESS idiot mistakes.

The first time I dropped out of school (I tried to go back and finish 3 times before I finally threw in the towel), I was offered to be mentored by an Architect that lived across the street. He was teaching me the skill of drafting and the only thing he asked for in return was to go to work for his expanding architecture firm once I had gained enough proficiency to be useful. That’s it: Learn a valuable craft for free in exchange for getting a job doing that craft.

I worked with Ken for about 4 months. I was making great progress. Sometimes it was a bit boring for my artistic mind, but overall I enjoyed it. Then I thought I would get rich recruiting for Amway so one day I came to Ken and just said, “Thanks. But no thanks.”

At this moment I want to take 16-year old me and shake him. “What are you thinking moron?”

This may not have been a lifelong career, but I’m pretty certain I could have been making some good money for a few years before all of my peers even got through their first couple of frat parties.

I liked Ken. I liked the work. I really liked the money he was offering. And my response? No thanks.

Facepalm #2

Not sure which happened first because this feels like a lifetime ago, but somewhere in that same era I worked for a family-owned pizza parlor. It was at a lake resort and they ran an arcade, bumper boats, and a water slide. This was long before I ever heard of a Chuck-e-Cheese.

The kids of that family were all too young to do much work there and the father was a seasonal helicopter logging pilot. He would often be gone for weeks or months at a time for logging and fighting forest fires. Which meant that I was being groomed to manage the pizza side of the business.

Long story short: They offered me a 50% ownership position to stay on and manage the restaurant. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

I liked the family. I liked the job. I always wanted to own my own business. Instead, I took a seasonal job giving horseback tours of the mountain that sat behind the Lake Resort. It paid $2 more per hour and gave me evenings free to flirt with tourist girls.

Given my social skills at the time, this did not increase my chances of getting laid. So I basically just gave up this opportunity for a seasonal $2 per hour.

Dumb-ass.

By they way, two or three years later they sold that business and it’s still there to this day. So worst-case scenario I would have probably been able to get a decent payout, and best case I might have been able to have a long-term viable business up in my hometown. Regardless, I would have definitely learned more by going through that process, and that business knowledge would have been more valuable than any money I made.

The short story of a long history.

If I went into that much detail about all my idiot missed opportunities I’d be sitting here writing for the rest of my life and miss even more opportunities, so I won’t waste any more of your time or mine. And I want you to read the last part so that you don’t miss the opportunity that we both have today. So, here is a small sampling of other examples before we get to the big finish:

As a low-level bank employee, I was invited to lunch by a regional executive of Bank of America. Yes, it’s EvilCorp, but at the time I was an idiot to blow off his advice and offer to help.

I’ve had similar offers of mentorship by several career musicians and artists. Thanks, but no thanks! idiot

At age 17, I moved to L.A. and dabbled in the movie business. I just started to get some footing and work my way up in networking circles. Got broke, a little scared and bored. Moved back to the small town. doh!

Part 2: The one that’s not too late to fix- and you can take advantage of NOW:

Several years ago I "discovered" bitcoin. The price when I bought my first BitCoin? $17 U.S. per BTC. The price of each one as I’m writing this?

2587 US Dollars

Fuck.

I only bought 2 at that old price. A little more at about $34 each.

I had a plan to regularly invest small amounts into the cryptocurrency and set aside a portion for trading and speculating in other versions, “alt-coins” that were just starting to come into the market. Instead, I got bored and distracted and eventually forgot all about it.

If I do the math and see what I would have today had I stuck with my plan, I would now possess over 17 Million Dollars’ worth. That’s a conservative estimate.

That hurts.

But here’s the whole point of this rambling article: You and I are still looking at the “ground floor” of this new industry.

Cryptocurrency is like a tree. The best time to plant one was years ago. The second best time to plant one IS RIGHT NOW.

As a chronic opportunity miss-er, I hope I can convince you to learn from my idiot mistakes and not miss this one. I seriously don’t want to say, “I told you so”. I won’t have to. If you wait another minute after reading this, you’ll regret it later. I’m absolutely sure of it.

Don’t be like me. Be smart. Start educating yourself now and get involved. I’m listing a couple of resources here for you to jump into the rabbit-hole. Anyone, even if (especially if) you’re 12-years old when you read this, can learn enough to get involved now and set yourself up for a future we can’t even dream of.

You don’t need to understand any of the technical sides of crypto in order to get in now. You don’t need a wad of cash to invest either. Just skip the Starbucks for today and buy $5 worth of Bitcoin. By doing just that, you’ll have taught yourself how to get in the game, then just keep going!

If you have a friend that is into crypto, ask them for help. If you don't have friends, I'm sorry. If you don't have friends that are into crypto, then start googling how-to. I would list a bunch of resources here but this is cutting edge stuff, so in 6 months any links I post could be out-of-date.

You'll probably want to start with an exchange service to convert some of your local currency into Bitcoin. From there, it's easy to exchange it for other types of crypto as you learn. If what I said just now doesn't make sense, don't worry about it. Just start learning. Or don't. (This is not financial advice- only you are responsible for your decisions) I for one am not missing out again.

List of the best Crypto Exchanges: https://blockgeeks.com/guides/best-cryptocurrency-exchanges/
List of all Crypto Exchanges: https://www.cryptocoincharts.info/markets/info

A short video explaining the technology:

Seriously? You can't watch an 8-minute video to start learning and scrounge up $5 to play with? Now that’s dumb.

P.S.
I’m posting this on Steemit first because that’s another opportunity I learned about early on and proceeded to do nothing. But because I want to get this out to as many people as possible, I’ll be re-posting this on a couple of other blogs I run later on. Most of you on Steemit obviously already get this. My hope was to tell my story for you to share to your skeptical friends and family.

Thanks for reading- hope it was useful!

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Hello! My name is Cody Limbaugh. I own LiveAllYourLife.com, where I write about:

Personal Development
Money and Business
Fitness
Art
Future Tech & Science
And Philosophy

I appreciate you taking the time to read this. I look forward to meeting you!