One of the hardest parts of investing isn't choosing the right fund or finding the best platform. It's staying calm when the market falls.

If you're new to investing, seeing your portfolio drop by 10%, 20% or even 30% can be uncomfortable. It's natural to wonder whether you should sell everything before things get even worse.

The truth is that market crashes aren't unusual. They're a normal part of investing, and you should never sell if it goes against your usual plan.

When you look at a chart of the stock market over the last 50 or 100 years, it's easy to focus on the long-term upward trend. What those charts often hide are the many periods where markets have fallen sharply.

Investors have lived through the dot-com crash, the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and countless other periods of uncertainty, like Trump's war in Iran, tariffs, or simply tweets that move markets.. At the time, each one felt like the crisis that would change everything.

Yet markets have recovered from every major downturn so far and have gone on to reach new highs. That doesn't guarantee future performance, but it does remind us that volatility is part of the journey, not a sign that investing has failed.

Markets react to uncertainty.

That uncertainty might be caused by inflation, rising interest rates, wars, political events, recessions or simply investors becoming too optimistic and then correcting their expectations.

Nobody can consistently predict when the next crash will happen or how severe it will be. If they could, they'd almost certainly be the richest investor in the world.

Instead of trying to predict the next downturn, many long-term investors accept that market falls are inevitable and build their investment strategy around that fact.

One of the biggest dangers during a market crash is making emotional decisions.

When markets are falling, it feels sensible to sell and "wait until things improve". The problem is that nobody knows when that moment will come.

Some of the stock market's strongest days often happen shortly after its worst ones. If you sell during a downturn and wait too long to reinvest, you risk missing the recovery.

That's one of the reasons experienced investors often say that time in the market is more important than timing the market.

Although it doesn't feel like it at the time, a falling market can be good news for investors who are still contributing regularly, especially if you are in the accumulation phase of investing.

Think of it like a sale in your favourite shop. If you believed something was worth buying last month, it's arguably even better value when it's 20% cheaper, as long as you aren't close to needing the money or retirement.

The same principle applies to investing. If you're investing every month through a Stocks & Shares ISA or pension, a market downturn means your regular contributions buy more units than they did before. If markets recover in the future, those extra units may prove valuable over the long term.

As teachers, most of us are investing for goals that are decades away, not months.

Whether you're investing alongside the Teachers' Pension Scheme, saving for early retirement or building wealth for your family, the day-to-day movements of the stock market become much less important when your investment horizon is 20 or 30 years.

That doesn't mean market crashes are enjoyable. They aren't. Just don't look too regularly at your investments, day to day changes are just noise and mean nothing long term.  Keep to the plan and invest regularly in diversified index funds.

But they are a normal part of long-term investing, and understanding that can make them much easier to live through.

If you assume markets will occasionally fall by 20%, 30% or more, then those periods become part of the plan rather than a reason to abandon it.

Successful investing isn't about avoiding every downturn. It's about having the patience and discipline to stay invested through them, and to keep investing.  Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.

After all, every long-term stock market chart includes crashes. It also includes recoveries.

The challenge isn't predicting when they'll happen. It's having the confidence not to panic when they do.

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Investments can fall as well as rise, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable guide to future returns.