Merging Late When Driving

An exercise in confidence and exercising your risk muscle

To build wealth you must take risk

Risk doesn’t need to be gambling the farm and should be asymmetrical. Asymmetrical risk is a high upside and a low downside.

When I first switched from being employed to self employed I was terrified. Looking back, I have no idea why I was terrified considering I was young, had all the time in the world to course correct, I had no dependent children, my profession was in high demand.

The idea of going from a guaranteed paycheck to absolute uncertainty was very hard to handle.

However, I could see that other people could do it.

Other people were doing it and making a lot of money.

It’s hard to have confidence in doing something if you have never done it before and don’t have the track record, trajectory and history to back it up.

I jumped into the deep end out of financial necessity. My initial contracts were 3 months long. Having a large mortgage and not knowing whether I would have an income in a few weeks was terrifying. After the 3 months I’d have to go through the whole interviewing process with maybe a chance of being hired.

During these early years of establishing myself as a self employed individual I created an exercise in confidence.

Late merging while driving.

This is how it goes.

You find yourself in a situation where the traffic is being merged say from 3 or 2 lanes down into 1.

The lizard brain, the employee brain wants you to merge early into the traffic for safety. If you don’t merge in early the other drivers won’t let you in and you’ll be stuck. People hate people who merge in late. They are selfish. They will raise their eyebrows, swear, give you distasteful looks, deliberately block you.

In this exercise I want you to drive in the lane that is closed merging in at the end, bypassing all the other traffic. Obviously be safe. Count all the cars you pass and get ahead by. Be conscious of all the cars you get ahead of.

You will merge in, you will beat dozens of people. You will succeed. You will manage that social anxiety that rises when you go against the norm.

It will be OK.

This exercise when repeated will give you a little sandbox or staging area where you can practice the unpredictable, how you will cope with it and always succeed. You get a portfolio of proof of success in facing the uncertainty and doubt and winning.

I used to do this exercise a lot when I first started my business. It gave me some comfort in handling the unknown.

Don’t run away from risk, it will keep your wealth growing.