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The 36 Best Lessons I’ve Learned In Life

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Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 1/3/2023 8 min read

Here’s my first little birthday gift for you in honor of my 36th birthday yesterday and I HIGHLY suggest you take advantage of them ASAP

Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes, I’m overwhelmed by how supportive our community is and it makes me appreciate my job as a teacher even more so please go HERE to help me build a new school for my birthday, that’s all I want so no others gifts please, also grab my blowout birthday sales HERE and HERE and also check out the 100% FREE https://timsykesacademy.com all to celebrate my 36th birthday yesterday, thanks to so many of you for all the well wishes!

Here’s an hourlong video I made today that I want you to watch from beginning to end as I want to share all the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years.  Hopefully, they can help you on your path and get you to understand why I’m so obsessed with creating more millionaire trading challenge students:

I’ll get this important video transcribed shortly, but here’s my list of the 36 top lessons I’ve learned over the years, leave a comment below this post with which #s speak the most to you!

36 Life Lessons

1. Cut Losses Quickly

2. Life is too short to deal with negative people/those with bad attitudes, make it fun and exciting and only deal with people who are positive and worth being around.

3. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy freedom which allows you to find happiness and to get money you need to study hard and become an expert in at least 1 subject

4. Travel EVERYWHERE and learn about our amazing world and meet amazing people everywhere!

5. Luxuries are nice, but the happiest people I meet are also the poorest as they are grateful for just life itself so never lose sight of what really matters in life

6. We’re in a very unique time in history with the Internet being the most important invention in centuries since the printing press…don’t waste this opportunity, try multiple strategies and see what fits your personality best

7. People think billionaires are cool, they’re not…the few I’ve met and hung out with are weird as shit and mostly miserable, imprisoned by their $/fame, I only have a few million in the bank, whenever it starts getting to 8 figures I donate more to charity and always will to keep everything balanced (somewhat)

8. Dream big and study hard, there’s NOTHING you cannot accomplish if you put your mind to it no matter your background or where you live

9. Don’t let ANYONE tell you your limits, you’re capable of much more than you or anyone else believes and you might surprise yourself if you’re patient enough with any goal

10. Have patience and don’t expect success right away…don’t give up at the first sign of an obstacle, when you do get successful, you’ll appreciate those obstacles that helped mold you

11. Focus on your health, not just physical health, but also mental health too, it matters…I wish I had realized this sooner.

12. Don’t be so strict and uptight every day of your life, let loose and have a cheat day every now and then, you only live once (that’s not to say live every day like it’s your last, that’s a recipe for disaster)

13. I’ve heard of a thing called work/life balance, but every single successful person I know doesn’t have it…how badly do you want success?

14. A normal life is boring…most millionaires have multiple streams of income, don’t just rely on one strategy for everything, have multiple businesses and projects and learn to multi-task

15. Reward yourself when you do well and accomplish your goals and don’t berate yourself too badly when things don’t go well, use the bad experiences as lessons to do better.

16. Making millions isn’t as easy as most on the Internet claims, but it is possible to do within a few years as proven by now SEVERAL of my students…and I have even more six-figure students

17. Get on social media and use it to amplify your voice/show off your expertise, it’s good to be real in this day and age, so many fakers afraid to show their real names, ENTIRE track record

18. Become an expert in whatever you love, it doesn’t matter how weird a niche it is, there’s $ everywhere these days

19. If you focus on what you love and fail you’re still happy, but if you succeed at something you don’t love you’re not happy, hence why it’s okay to fail

20. Failure is a part of EVERY journey, don’t be scared of it, embrace it and learn from it

21. You don’t have to fail spectacularly to learn spectacularly, aim small, miss small and then adapt in the pursuit of success

22. You don’t have to take out loans or steal or use leverage, if you’re diligent, hard-working, competent and patient enough, $ and success will come to you in the long run even if you’re conservative with your $

23. The best thing you can do is be happy and self-sufficient, THEN worry about helping others

24. It took me a while to find my passion in teaching/charity work, but now that I’ve found it, I’m going hardcore with both…what do you love and are you focusing on it enough?

25. Most people never discover what makes them truly happy and that’s truly sad, don’t make that mistake

26. Work on building your own dreams, not someone else’s

27. People are worried about who they hang out with and who they get influenced by, don’t hang out with anyone every now and then and focus on yourself and get influenced by your heroes

28. The world may be ending soon and there’s nothing you can do about it so just maximize every day and be grateful for what time we do have

29. Don’t worry about things you can’t control, don’t play CNBC-type guessing games, focus on things that are predictable and then try your best, like short selling pump and dumps or dip buying them for morning bounces on the first big crack!

30. Be honest, helpful, hard-working and trustworthy…why this is so hard for so many people I just don’t know? Be the change you want to see in the world.

31. Get a mentor ASAP as it helps speed up your learning curve…I never had one so now every day I try to be the mentor to you that I only dreamed of…one of my top students Steven Dux has turned $27k into $900k+ by learning from multiple mentors in my Trading Challenge which has sped up his learning BIGTIME!

32. Let the world hate on penny stocks and weird niche strategies, the mainstream are mostly idiots and don’t get angry about the idiocy, be thankful for it since it opens up opportunities
33. Search for what makes you happy and embrace it, even if others in your life don’t, YOU are in control of YOU, nobody else is.

34. Give back to those who need a little extra help, whether it’s your money or time or a little TLC, it’s all helpful and appreciated and you’ll feel good about yourself too

35. Value friends, family, people who you are close to, don’t shit on any relationship as life is long and the best things take time to develop…I’m in year 10 of my teaching career and only in the past year or so has my Trading Challenge chatroom really become extraordinary with several millionaire traders alerting/mentoring in realtime…it took a LOT of hard work/time to get to this spot

36. Just be real, you don’t need to pretend and when you do pretend not to make mistakes or be human, people know you’re faking it so cut that shit out and people will respect you more for just being human…no matter what some may say, we’re all human and very alike so have a little more faith in humanity!


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Timothy Sykes

Tim Sykes is a penny stock trader and teacher who became a self-made millionaire by the age of 22 by trading $12,415 of bar mitzvah money. After becoming disenchanted with the hedge fund world, he established the Tim Sykes Trading Challenge to teach aspiring traders how to follow his trading strategies. He’s been featured in a variety of media outlets including CNN, Larry King, Steve Harvey, Forbes, Men’s Journal, and more. He’s also an active philanthropist and environmental activist, a co-founder of Karmagawa, and has donated millions of dollars to charity. Read More

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* Results are not typical and will vary from person to person. Making money trading stocks takes time, dedication, and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing in the stock market, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk. See Terms of Service here

The available research on day trading suggests that most active traders lose money. Fees and overtrading are major contributors to these losses.

A 2000 study called “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors” evaluated 66,465 U.S. households that held stocks from 1991 to 1996. The households that traded most averaged an 11.4% annual return during a period where the overall market gained 17.9%. These lower returns were attributed to overconfidence.

A 2014 paper (revised 2019) titled “Learning Fast or Slow?” analyzed the complete transaction history of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2006. It looked at the ongoing performance of day traders in this sample, and found that 97% of day traders can expect to lose money from trading, and more than 90% of all day trading volume can be traced to investors who predictably lose money. Additionally, it tied the behavior of gamblers and drivers who get more speeding tickets to overtrading, and cited studies showing that legalized gambling has an inverse effect on trading volume.

A 2019 research study (revised 2020) called “Day Trading for a Living?” observed 19,646 Brazilian futures contract traders who started day trading from 2013 to 2015, and recorded two years of their trading activity. The study authors found that 97% of traders with more than 300 days actively trading lost money, and only 1.1% earned more than the Brazilian minimum wage ($16 USD per day). They hypothesized that the greater returns shown in previous studies did not differentiate between frequent day traders and those who traded rarely, and that more frequent trading activity decreases the chance of profitability.

These studies show the wide variance of the available data on day trading profitability. One thing that seems clear from the research is that most day traders lose money .

Millionaire Media 66 W Flagler St. Ste. 900 Miami, FL 33130 United States (888) 878-3621 This is for information purposes only as Millionaire Media LLC nor Timothy Sykes is registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser. No information herein is intended as securities brokerage, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes cannot and does not assess, verify or guarantee the adequacy, accuracy or completeness of any information, the suitability or profitability of any particular investment, or the potential value of any investment or informational source. The reader bears responsibility for his/her own investment research and decisions, should seek the advice of a qualified securities professional before making any investment, and investigate and fully understand any and all risks before investing. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes in no way warrants the solvency, financial condition, or investment advisability of any of the securities mentioned in communications or websites. In addition, Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential loss arising from any use of this information. This information is not intended to be used as the sole basis of any investment decision, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the investment needs of any particular investor. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.

Citations for Disclaimer

Barber, Brad M. and Odean, Terrance, Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Available at SSRN: “Day Trading for a Living?”

Barber, Brad M. and Lee, Yi-Tsung and Liu, Yu-Jane and Odean, Terrance and Zhang, Ke, Learning Fast or Slow? (May 28, 2019). Forthcoming: Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=2535636”

Chague, Fernando and De-Losso, Rodrigo and Giovannetti, Bruno, Day Trading for a Living? (June 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101”