In psychology, there’s a term called “loss aversion.” When you gain something, you may feel happy for a short while; but if you lose the same amount of value, that feeling of regret and irritation can stick with you all day. It’s precisely because of this imbalance in how people feel that many people make a self-contradictory move in real-life situations.

To put it plainly, people are naturally sensitive to “loss.” It’s nobody’s fault—it's a survival instinct passed down from our ancestors—but in today’s world, this instinct has turned into a troublesome “old habit” that keeps getting in the way.

Think about it: you have two items—one that earns you ten thousand, and another that loses you ten thousand. How would most people choose?

Keep the one that’s losing, but somehow they still feel, “As long as I don’t sell, it doesn’t count.” What happens then? The gains don’t really get you much, while the losses keep sinking deeper and deeper because of factors you can’t see.

Let’s take another example. Suppose you spend a few thousand dollars to buy a ticket to a show. By the day it happens, there’s torrential wind and rain, and you can’t get a taxi. If you think rationally: go or don’t go—you’ll suffer either way; not going just means you’ve lost the ticket. But most people will still charge into the rain with gritted teeth, just so that the previous effort doesn’t end up going to waste, even if it means risking another night of bad mood and the chance of catching a cold.

So how do you break this deadlock? There’s one simple tactic: only look ahead, not back.

Before every decision, ask yourself: if you didn’t have this right now, would you spend money to buy it? If you wouldn’t, then you should sell it when you should sell, and throw it away when you should throw it away.

Even though the “scale” in your head is naturally tilted, you can change the weights. The next time you feel pain over a loss, tell yourself: that loss has nothing to do with you anymore. What you need to do now is to make sure the next step doesn’t get dragged down as well. Once you’ve figured this out, the feeling of regret will at least be cut in half. So stop wrestling with the past and set your sights on the long term.

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