It’s wild how stress works.
You’d think that after going through hard stuff—personal, professional, financial—we’d learn. We would carry those lessons forward and tuck them in our back pocket for the next time the storm rolls in, but more often than not, we don’t. We forget. We panic. We convince ourselves that this time, it’s different.
I’ve been in the investment business long enough to see the cycle repeat more times than I can count. Market volatility hits—maybe it’s a 300-point drop, maybe it's a geopolitical headline, or maybe it's just election year noise—and people start sweating. They pull up their accounts, look at the number they liked the most (the high-water mark), and say, “We’re losing everything. Should we go to cash?”
It's a completely natural reaction, but it’s not always the right one.
When I first started in this profession—young, motivated, maybe a little naïve—it wasn’t long before September 11th happened. The World Trade Center. The Pentagon. The country froze, and the markets did too. I thought, “This might be the worst thing I’ll ever experience as an adult, advisor, citizen, etc.” And then came 2008. Then COVID. And interest rate hikes, and the wars, and the budget cliffs. And… well, you get the idea.
The point is, that first gut punch wasn’t the last. every single time, clients—good, smart people—thought it was the end of the world. But if you had stayed the course, if you held a diversified portfolio, if you kept perspective—you’d be in a much better place today than you were back then.
What drives the market over time isn't panic or politics, it’s policy. It’s business cycles. It’s innovation. It’s people showing up to work every day to build something. So yes, headlines rattle cages, but they don't rewrite the long-term rules of the game.
This isn’t just about investing. It’s about life. You have a bad week at work, a fight at home, an unexpected bill, a weird conversation with a friend that doesn’t sit right. Then our brain does what it’s wired to do: What if this gets worse? What if I lose my job? What if we break up? What if I can’t pay for this? What if, what if, what if…
We start stacking all these worst-case scenarios on top of each other. The weight of that stack? That’s stress. That’s anxiety. That’s what keeps people up at night and changes how they treat others during the day. Here’s the thing—most of the time, that stack never falls. Most of those dominoes don’t even move. Even when something does happen, we adapt. We take a deep breath. We make the next best decision. We figure it out. That’s why I think perspective might be one of the most valuable currencies we have. Not just in markets, not just in relationships, but in everything. The ability to pause, zoom out, and say, “Okay, what’s really going on here?” can change everything.
I’m not saying you should float through life like it doesn’t matter. I’m not saying hard things don’t require effort. They do. You need to care. You need to fight for what matters. But you also need to know how to fight. And sometimes the best strategy isn’t to dig in—it’s to step back.
Stress was built into us for survival: for getting out of the cold, for finding food, for running from a saber-toothed tiger. But these days, most of us have shelter, most of us have food, yet the stress response is still firing, just aimed at different things—markets, texts that go unanswered, our kid’s report card. That’s why I’ve been reminding clients, friends, and myself lately: don’t make big decisions from a place of panic. Don’t make big decisions based on emotion.
Don’t let stress steal the moments you won’t get back. The market will go back up. The conversation will settle. The day will get better. You just have to give it some time and take one baby step forward. So next time the walls feel like they’re closing in, ask yourself: Is this something I need to grind through? Or is this something I need to see differently? That pause, that check-in, might be the start of something healthier. Something clearer. Something better.
Because time really does change everything. Even the things that feel unbearable in the moment.
Mark J Modzeleski, CFS, CLTC, AIF
President, Legacy Wealth Advisors of NY