Are You Climbing Mount Stupid?

We stood there on the sidewalk of the busy road, bikes at our side.  He was puking all over the place, coughing and heaving, hands on his knees.

“Seriously, you can go, I’ll be all right. I just don’t know where this came from”, he said. 

“I’m not going to leave you here dude, I know a shortcut back that avoids most of the hills”, I replied.

“I think I can go on”, he said, stubbornly, as if the last 5 minutes of puking didn’t happen.

“No, let’s head back”, I insisted, “it’s getting hot”. 

I was on a bike ride with my neighbor from up the street.  He had been asking to ride with me for a while, we talked bikes quite a bit and he knew his stuff.  He was thin, younger than me, and looked fit. 

He was from the Netherlands after all, a cycling mecca.  So why wouldn’t he be fit?

 

Everyone Is Not You

If you’ve already reached financial independence as I have or if you’re far along in the journey, you’ve likely mastered some things.  As we all know, the formula isn’t complex – spend way less than you make, invest the difference, let compounding interest do its thing.

But mastering some or most of the behaviors required to win at this simple game is what’s really hard.  Really really hard.

And if you’re winning at the game it’s an all too common trap to lose sight of how hard it is for others to do the same. 

• Just because you overcame vanity and saved tons of money by buying cheap used cars doesn’t mean others have. Or that it’s easy for them to do.
• Just because you’re not depressed and vulnerable to “retail therapy” doesn’t mean it’s not a tough problem for others.
• Just because you slayed your student loan debt doesn’t mean it’s easy for others to do.

We all start the financial independence journey from different life circumstances and backgrounds.  And we all bring unique personalities, habits, and traits to the fight.

Some that are helpful, some that are counterproductive, and some that are down right destructive.  It can be hard to step outside of your experience and understand that.

 

Mount Stupid

If you’ve never heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect in psychology, it is described thusly:

The Dunning-Kruger bias occurs when unskilled people believe they are skilled, knowledgeable or exceptionally experienced in something when they’re not. … These people underestimate their relative ability and think that tasks which are easy for them are just as easy for others.

So that basically describes almost everyone arguing about shit on social media.  It’s also sometimes called “Mount Stupid” because when graphed it looks like this.

If you’re financially independent you might be falling victim – somewhat – to this effect. 

I caveat it with “somewhat” because you may well be skilled.  You may be a skilled investor or real-estate person, so you don’t fit the traditional definition of Dunning-Kruger. 

But you could still be underestimating the difficulty it took to do what you did, and think that if it was easy for you it should be easy for others.

 

I Summited Mount Stupid

I didn’t understand, or even consider, that my neighbor might not be as fit as I was.  On the surface he looked as fit as me or even more so. 

This will sound a bit douchey but it’s true – I wasn’t even riding particularly hard that day.  I thought I was taking it kind of easy.

But to him it was a murderous pace.  So much so that he puked his guts out as a result of trying to keep up.

Regular readers know I climb mountains a lot.  In this case I climbed Mount Stupid.

The fault, however, wasn’t mine alone.  He was too proud to say anything.  If he had just asked me to slow down I would have.  But he wanted to prove that he could hang and didn’t want to show weakness. 

This is the equivalent of being in a classroom and afraid to ask a simple question that you’re sure everyone else knows the answer to. You don’t want to appear stupid, so you don’t ask. 

Our egos often hold us back, precious little things that they are.

 

Two Way Street

Helping others to financial independence and learning how to get to financial independence both require skills. Some of the harder ones are those of self-reflection and self-awareness.

To help others, you must realize they’re not you.  And what might have been easy for you is likely not so easy for others. 

To be helped, you must realize you are you, shortcomings and all, and put your ego aside and own up to it.