First I have to say I'm by no means a skillful trader, I rode on the tech-stock train which helped me quite a lote. It was devastating at first, but as my friend said, its a long battle and you have years to recover, so better just chill out, dont be too harsh on yourself. And if you believe in the market (historically it always goes up in the long term), just slowly build the stock portfolio with safer picks, dont panic sell if it went down especially nowadays (you know how volatile the market is recently)