Rain falls down

I'm given gifts of stories and anecdotes in my NYC therapy practice that I can't help but share (with appropriate anonymity for the therapy patient, of course). Being a therapist in Lower Manhattan, as you might imagine, the stories are often from the world of finance. This one of a business professor--a successful New York financier who taught a popular course in value investing which my therapy patient attended. The esteemed professor began each and every class with a simple recitation of a fundamental principle: rain falls down.

That was it. Without elaboration. At first, my therapy patient reported, the students were intrigued, but as the semester wore on, believing the point to have been well made the practice seemed to wear. Yet the ritual persisted:

Rain. Falls. Down.

Rain can fall in a lot if directions, really. We've all found ourselves driving through a treacherous storm, or emerging from a NYC subway and finding ourselves soaked by seemingly horizontal droplets. Sometimes rain swirls. I've even heard reports of rain, under just the right conditions, "falling" up.

And does rain really even fall at all? Aren't these condensed bits of water vapor really being pulled by the gravitational force of the earth. Does "falling" really convey the right point? And doesn't quantum mechanics suggest that rain could really move in any direction?

Week 2: "Rain falls down."

Week 3: "Rain falls down."

Week 4: "Rain falls down."

Too smart for your own good

Perhaps you didn't study meteorology or physics but instead worked your way through the great thinkers of enlightenment philosophy. No lessor a figure than Descartes proposed, as did others, that perhaps one's senses could be mistaken in observation, or perhaps even we are meant to be deceived. David Hume went so far as to suggested that when one billiard ball strikes another we have no empirical basis from which to say that the first ball caused the movement of the second.

Week 5: "Rain falls down."

Week 6: "Rain falls down."

Week 7: "Rain falls down."

What does it matter anyway?

Rain, shmain. Who cares about rain? What does it really matter, anyway?

Week 8: "Rain falls down."

Week 9: "Rain falls down."

Rain falls down

Because it does. Because I see it with my own eyes. Because it isn't really a controversial assertion.

In investing, as elsewhere, there are significant forces that can throw off our confidence in our perception of reality:

A stock goes out of fashion and we're told to dump it, even though the numbers suggest there's real value there.

An employee whose success was much hoped for starts showing up late and turning in poor work but it's hard to admit we made a poor hiring decision so we ignore the signs even as they become increasingly obvious.

A spouse starts coming home later and later with hard-to-believe explanations but denies that anything is going on, so we let it go.

A sales clerk who tells us these sandals are just as good as the ones we were looking for that are out of stock yet they seem flimsy and aren't to your taste.

A snack is marketed as healthy but the label lists unpronounceable ingredients and loads of carbs.

Week 10: "Rain falls down."

Week 11: "Rain falls down."

Reality, like rain, is slippery

Or our connection to it can be, anyway. Each of us has different vulnerabilities--our own set of circumstances where we can go along with something in spite of our own good sense. Perhaps it's the wishful thinking that comes with love, or the "jump-on-the-bandwagon" pulls of financial investing or fad diets.

There's plenty we don't know and yes, sometimes we're wrong. But there are also some pretty fundamental features of the universe, and some goings on around us that are fairly straightforward.

Week 12: "Rain falls down."

How to hold onto reality in a doubt-inducing storm

Hold on tight. Stubbornness has a key place here. It's worth running through some critical-thinking/ reality-testing questions:

Does someone have an incentive for me to second guess myself? Who gets paid if I go along with this?

Is there something familiar about this moment? Have I been fooled in similar circumstances before?

What are the facts? Are they more or less straightforward than the principle of rain falling down?

There's also tremendous value in building a bevy of friends and colleagues (and a great therapist) who have known strengths in certain areas of seeing where you may be more limited, and who know something about your particular propensities around denial. Schedule a reality checkup.

Week 13: "Rain falls down."

Leave room for doubt

But beware the slippery slope. Sure, maybe the rain isn't rain at all, or perhaps next time we'll see one of those wacky sideways storms.

The freedom to think what you think and feel what you feel is about as fundamental a human right as you can get. Knowing what you know is a vital precondition.

Rain falls down.