Drag Yourself Down The Water Slide

Last weekend I took my two boys to the nearby water park. It’s modest as far as water parks go, but it’s 20 minutes from our house and we have a season pass for the summer.

Usually my wife is darting them over for a couple hours, and they must have been there nearly a dozen times this summer.

My youngest (recently turned 6) is our high-energy, adventurous, risk-taking extrovert. He’s been down the water slides many times. His first few trips were sitting on the foam matt with me or Kaitlin, sitting between our legs.

But he quickly graduated to going down solo. And he loves it.

Our oldest (recently turned 8) is our quieter, more reserved, calculated observer type. 

He has shown zero interest in these slides and prefers to spend his time exploring the shallow pool areas with his goggles on.

They have “slides” there as well, but they are the type more frequented by toddlers and parents holding babies shouting “wheeeeee!”.

I have tried to talk Tucker into going down the larger water slides with me on numerous occasions. My wife has done the same.

But he has not budged.

I’m usually quite good at helping him get out of his own head and try things, so I figured I’d give it another go last weekend.

For an hour and a half I attempted to reason with him and reassure him that he would be ok.

But it became very clear that, as much as he told me “maybe”, he was not going to go down those slides.

So I was going to make him.

I got on my knees and looked Tucker in the eyes. 

I told him one of two things were going to happen when we went down.

One, he would be a little scared but ultimately have fun. Or two, be a little scared, realize it’s not as bad as he imagined, but still decide it’s not for him.

And then I told him, “But one of those two things is going to happen right now.”

And I grabbed him by the arm and began hauling him up the hill.

He whined and cried, begging me not to force him to go but I kept dragging him up. By the time we got to the top he knew he wasn’t getting out of it. He sat down with me and off we went.

He started making nervous, panicky sounds for the first half of the ride, squirming and declaring, “My stomach!”.

But at about the halfway point he nervously said, “It’s… it’s kind of fun.”

And I wish I could have seen his face at that moment!

When we splashed into the termination pool I jumped up and did the stereotypical over-the-top parent praise to show him how excited and proud I was that he “DID IT!”. 

And when I asked him if he had fun he begrudgingly said, “yes” only to be followed a few seconds later by a very sheepish, “Can we do it again”? 

We rode that same slide again and again and again until the park nearly closed.

After a handful of times he told me that “it gets a little more fun each time”. And I explained to him that’s because he’s losing that fear.

And now he’s declared that he’s ready to go down solo the next time we visit. I can’t wait!

So why am I telling you all this?

The more I reflect on that day the more I see so many investing lessons in it.

There Is Value In Observing

I love that Tucker is calculated. He likes to assess things and be confident about what he’s getting himself into. 

Overall, it serves him well.

This is no different than doing your market research as a real estate investor or analyzing a stock you’re considering purchasing.

But you don’t want to over analyze a situation. That’s what Tucker was doing and that’s what so many investors also do.

We call this analysis paralysis. 

It’s arguably the worst thing you can do in your personal life as well as with your investment decisions.

There Is Risk In Doing Nothing

Tucker spent most of his summer NOT enjoying the water slides. That sucks, and I wish he would have been able to experience them far more.

This is what we call opportunity cost.

But I’ve been imagining what would happen if I didn’t make him go down last week.

Next year, he probably still wouldn’t want to go.

Maybe he’s still afraid. Or maybe he’s not but doesn’t see the value in doing it any more.

The real risk here is that he trains himself to be complacent. 

The next time he’s in a situation like this, whether consciously or not, he looks back and thinks, “I had enough fun in the kiddy pools without those big slides, and nothing bad happened to me then. Why take the risk with this?”

The idea of that kills me.

Instead, I want him to look back and think, “I remember being afraid of doing that but then realized it wasn’t all that scary and ended up being a ton of fun!”. 

If we never have an experience where we do something we initially thought risky or scary but realize we were wrong, how many other opportunities might pass us by?

We see this in investing all the time. People are afraid to try new strategies, markets, or investment vehicles.

For example, I know real estate people that are absolutely terrified of the stock market. While I understand where the fear comes from, I don’t understand not trying to conquer it.

Start Small And Build From There

The easiest way to get over these fears is to start small.

I did not force Tucker to go down that slide alone. That would be insane, and it would likely have resulted in a traumatic event.

I made sure he felt as safe as possible, with me, and I talked to him the whole way through it.

When I started investing in real estate I did the same thing. I started small, with a cheap house that was already rented. 

The logic was that whatever might go wrong would not destroy me financially. When you minimize the risk and realize the reward is many more times that, the decision becomes much more clear.

And ultimately, that’s all these decisions come down to… risk versus reward.

A big part of the problem is we don’t adequately understand the risk because we only look at it from one side of the decision making tree.

But if we look at the other side, the one where we take no action at all, we need to understand the risk of doing nothing.

Doing nothing is the costliest decision of all.