Vicious Trapsby Morgan HouselPatience and Confidence. They both...

Vicious Traps
by Morgan Housel

Patience and Confidence. They both sound great. But mixed together they often form stubbornness, which is a disaster. Confidence that you’re right gives you permission to ignore signs that you’re wrong, and Patience gives you permission to extend that denial indefinitely.

Charlie Munger once said:

Failure to handle Psychological Denial is a common way for people to go broke. You’ve made an enormous commitment to something. You’ve poured effort and money in. And the more you put in, the more that the whole consistency principle makes you think, “Now it has to work. If I put in just a little more, then it’ll all work.”

People go broke that way, because they can’t stop, rethink, and say, “I can afford to write this one off and live to fight again. I don’t have to pursue this thing as an obsession in a way that will break me.”

In general: People who are panicking know they’re panicking. People who are being dishonest know they’re being dishonest. But those in a Patience-Confidence Trap have no idea, because both traits on their own seem so positive.