I read the first two books Peter Lynch wrote. He really worked hard at investing and of course was incredibly successful with the Magellan fund.
My first stock purchase was in 1959 at age 17. I remember the Nifty Fifty
Nifty Fifty - Wikipedia
and the mostly bull market until the mid seventies at which time it seriously tanked and did not recover for years.
Warren Buffett gave a famous speech at a July 1999 Sun Valley get together of the superrich one year where he pointed out that the Dow on 12/31/64 was 874.12; on 12/31/81 it was 875. During this time the sales of the Fortune 500 companies had grown fivefold yet during the 17 years the Dow had gone nowhere.
In the past from time to time I ignored my gut telling me "no, no, no" but charged ahead anyway to make a devastatingly poor decision. For the most part I have learned from those costly actions to listen to my gut which I believe is really the whole of my subconscious brain and my higher power.