Developed a habit: at the beginning of each year, review the most basic and easily overlooked survival rules.

Especially when the market is smooth sailing and your account is growing. That’s when it’s easiest to become self-absorbed and react too slowly when things go wrong. So you need to remind yourself repeatedly—stay away from those true sources of self-destruction.

An investment master summarized it quite well: avoid debt, avoid bad people and bad situations, stay away from fools—these three points put you ahead of over 90% of people. It sounds simple, but it’s a lifelong lesson to practice.

**The first killer: Debt**

The cruelest part of the market is—losses come quickly and fiercely, but recovering takes forever.

If you lose 50%, you need 100% gain to break even. Lose 75%? That requires a 300% return. Lose 90%? You need a 900% market move to recover. The numbers sound exaggerated, but that’s the real picture of leverage.

Debt is like a death spiral with the accelerator pressed down. Being free of debt is true freedom—no need to constantly risk everything to make a comeback.

**The second killer: Toxic entanglements**

Unproductive conflicts, bad collaborations, lawsuits, office politics—all fall into one category: draining energy with zero output.

The most dangerous thing isn’t wasting time. It’s that these things gradually erode your judgment. Every hour spent arguing, explaining, repairing relationships weakens your rationality. By the time you realize it, you’ve already taken a hit in trading.

When faced with this, you must cut through the chaos quickly—completely sever it, without delay. Then focus your energy on things that can truly compound your gains.

**The third killer: Surrounding yourself with fools**

Stay away from these types of people:

Unreasonable, arrogant, dishonest individuals; those who make bad decisions and wait to be rescued; people who never reflect on their failures; those who mistake busywork for progress.

Most people are driven by fear, jealousy, and greed. They make decisions based on emotion first, then find logic to justify them. If you stay with such people for too long, you’ll gradually be assimilated—start replacing thinking with emotion.

This is often the moment when everything begins to spiral out of control.

All in all, it boils down to one sentence: living clearly requires regular reminders to stay alert.