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“Arre, don’t sell it now. It will recover.”
He had been saying this for three months.
He had bought the investment after a friend he trusted recommended it. At the time, the decision felt easy. The friend was confident, had been investing for years, and had made good calls before.
But the investment wasn’t doing well.
Every few days, he would open the app, look at the number, and close it again.
One evening, he came across an article saying the investment could fall further.
For a moment, he thought:
“Maybe I made a mistake.”
Then he started looking for something else.
He found an article explaining why the sector could recover.
Then a video saying the current fall was temporary.
Then someone on a WhatsApp group said, “These things take time.”
He felt better.
The next morning, he told his wife,
“See, I checked properly. It should be fine.”
But something interesting had happened.
He had started with a question:
“Is this still a good investment?”
And slowly, without realizing it, he had changed the question to:
“What can I find that tells me I was right?”
This is where Cognitive Dissonance enters the picture.
We don’t like the discomfort of holding two conflicting thoughts:
“I made a sensible decision.”
and
“Maybe I made a mistake.”
The mind naturally tries to reduce that discomfort.
One way it does this is by finding explanations that allow both beliefs to coexist.
And once we become emotionally invested in our original decision, Confirmation Bias can make this even stronger.
(Picture Source: https://in.pinterest.com )
We notice the information that supports us.
We remember the positive opinions.
We give more weight to reasons for staying.
And information that challenges our decision suddenly feels exaggerated, unreliable or “not the full picture.”
The investment hasn’t changed.
Our relationship with the decision has.
This is why reviewing a financial decision requires more than asking,
“Has it made money?”
Sometimes we also need to ask:
“Am I evaluating this decision honestly, or am I trying to prove that I was right?”
Because being wrong about an investment is uncomfortable.
But refusing to reconsider it simply because we don’t want to admit we were wrong can become far more expensive.
The ability to say “Maybe I was wrong” isn’t weakness.
Sometimes, it is exactly what allows us to make a better decision next.
