A few days ago, I came home to a mess.
About a year ago, my wife and I got a German Shepherd puppy named Arinze. He’s incredibly smart, loyal, affectionate, and intense. Very intense.
We’ve had shepherds before, but Arinze is different. Our trainer, who has worked with police dogs, told us he’s more driven than most working dogs he’s trained. That means he requires a lot of structure, activity, patience, and attention. If he doesn’t get enough physical and mental stimulation, you’ll know it pretty quickly.
Last week, I took some time in the middle of the day to take him to the park for some training. We finally got a clear day where the field was dry, and I wanted to get some work in with him before the rain arrived. We trained for about 45 minutes, came home, and I stayed with him for a while afterward to help him settle down before leaving to go back to work.
He drank a huge amount of water after our session, and before leaving, I took him outside. He went to the bathroom, and everything seemed fine.
But when I came home that evening, he had had an accident in his crate. I knew he liked to swim and play in the water, but this is not what I had in mind.
Now, if you’ve ever had a dog, especially a large one, you know this isn’t exactly a minor inconvenience. My first reaction was frustration. I had just gotten home from work, and now I had a crate, bedding, and a dog that all needed immediate attention.
But as frustrated as I was, I also knew something else.
He didn’t do it on purpose.
He wasn’t being defiant. He wasn’t “bad.” He simply drank more water than he could handle, got stuck in a crate longer than usual, and couldn’t hold it.
He did the best he could.
And this wasn’t the first time something like this happened.
The first few times, I handled it differently. I got anxious and frustrated. I got anxious because I wasn’t exactly sure what to do first to keep the mess contained, and I probably made the situation feel bigger than it actually was.
My wife, on the other hand, tends to handle these situations immediately and more calmly. She just jumps in and deals with the problem without any hesitation. I admire that because in moments like that, my brain sometimes wants to focus on the frustration before the solution.
That’s one of the things that changes with experience.
After you deal with something like that a few times, you realize pretty quickly that panic doesn’t help. Anger doesn’t help either. It just makes an unpleasant situation harder than it already is.
Usually, the best thing you can do is slow down, assess the situation clearly, and handle what is actually in front of you.
The longer I’ve done this work, the more I’ve realized the same thing is true with investing.
There is always going to be something to worry about. Sometimes the concern is real. Sometimes it gets overstated. And sometimes it gets amplified by headlines, television, and social media that reward urgency.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the difference between inexperienced investors and seasoned ones usually isn’t intelligence. More often, it’s temperament.
Less experienced investors often feel like they need to do something every time the market drops. A headline hits, the market gets choppy, and it starts to feel like something must be wrong.
More experienced investors learn, sometimes the hard way, that the emotional response often does more damage than the market decline itself.
That doesn’t mean ignoring risk or pretending everything is fine. Good planning still requires adjustments, discipline, and awareness.
But maturity in investing often looks like being able to stay calm long enough to think clearly.
I’ve worked with retirees long enough to notice something. The people who tend to do best in retirement are not always the ones with the highest returns, the largest portfolios, or the most polished plans.
More often, they’re the ones who learn how to stay steady when something unexpected happens.
They understand that things rarely go exactly as planned. Markets move around. Expenses come up. Health changes. Life has a way of forcing adjustments. The people who handle retirement best usually learn not to let temporary stress drive big decisions.
That mindset matters in investing, in retirement, and honestly, in life.
By the time I finished cleaning everything up, Arinze had already moved on. He was lying on the floor, looking a little sheepish and otherwise completely at peace with the world.
Standing there, finishing a job I definitely hadn’t planned on, it crossed my mind that a lot of wisdom is really just staying calm enough to deal with what’s in front of you and not reacting emotionally.