Truth Bomb Tuesday: There safety in the herd. There’s safety in wrong.
“Not everyone can be wrong.”
Yeah, nah. Everyone can be wrong. In fact, they often are.
History is full of instances where everyone just had completely the wrong idea about things.
Humanity, as a whole, has a recurring tendency to collectively believe a whole bunch of stuff that is just off-beam… And then get very uppity at the people who try to point those mistakes.
“Oh, you think the Earth goes round the sun, do you? Sounds like somebody wants a little vacation in the torture chambers.”
Often, and well, most times really, the collective is generally a good guide for how things should be done. No one seems to be building their houses out of straw these days. Maybe there’s a good reason for that.
But every now and then, the collective wisdom is collective stupidity.
You see this a lot in the work I do. The collective view on how to get ahead is to get a good paying job, squirrel money away into your super, and work hard for 45 years.
Which isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s not the only way to get ahead.
But try telling people that you plan to skill-up as a property investor and retire on a portfolio of investment properties at 40, and people tend to get pretty uppity.
And so one of the biggest obstacles you have to overcome is how uncomfortable it feels to run against the collective ‘wisdom’.
We feel safe when we’re in the herd, and when the herd is telling us we’re on the wrong path, that can be a bit alarming.
When everyone is running (in a panic!) in one direction, it takes a lot of courage to go the other way.
And the real tragedy here is how we tend to internalise the disconnect – tell ourselves that it’s our fault.
“Why am I not happy working 45 years in the accounts department. Everyone else seems to be ok with it. There must be something wrong with me.”
Or
“It really does look to me that with a bit of study and hard work it is totally possible to set yourself up financially for life. But everyone tells me that it’s impossible. What do they see that I don’t? My brain must be broken.”
When our thought patterns don’t fit the mould, our first thought is that we must be wrong.
We start to mistrust our insight, and mistrust our instincts. We mistrust ourselves.
Which is why it’s good to remember that everybody is often wrong. Often. The collective wisdom is often collective stupidity.
The journey of life is learning to back ourselves – in a measured and methodical way. It’s learning to trust our own internal intelligence.
The herd is a good guide.
But it’s not infallible.
DB.