It all takes time
If you’re not a finance person, stick with me for a minute – I promise this will make you feel better by the end.
In 1993, there was a stock market study that became one of the most influential finance papers ever written. In Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers, researchers Narasimhan Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman analyzed decades of market data and arrived at a groundbreaking conclusion: the most profitable stocks over a 3, 6, 9, and 12 month window continued being profitable over the ensuing 3, 6, 9, 12 months.
In other words, stocks that had been rising tended to keep rising, while stocks that had been falling tended to keep falling. Now obviously, the surprising part wasn’t that trends exist, we already knew that. It was how long strong trends lasted, and what happened after that period ended.
What the researchers found was that the continuation of a trend was strongest in the 6 months directly following a 6-month-period of high profitability. Meaning if a stock went way up over the first half of a year, it was a good bet it would keep going up during the second half, even if other factors had changed. In fact, it wasn’t just a good bet, it was a great bet — to the tune of 12% returns.
What was also interesting is that in months 13-36 the trend would not only reverse, but retreats nearly the full distance it had come! The authors of the study showed that while markets were ultimately “efficient,” they got there far more slowly than most people believe.
Their explanation for why this happened was simple: momentum. When markets were set in motion, they were prone to keep moving in the same direction, even when other forces began to shift. The study proved that the trajectory of the way things are is a more powerful force than we give it credit for.
And it turns out this is true for humans as well.
Take self healing.
As we do the work of bettering ourselves - excavating our past, going to therapy, learning to self regulate - we often have a subconscious expectation that our internal state will shift quickly. We assume our efforts will translate into visible changes, soon. But when they don’t, when our “inner market” continues moving in the same direction it’s been going, we feel as though we’ve failed. Or that the work itself is ineffective.
But far more likely, is that we’re facing the same thing stocks are when they continue to barrel in one direction: momentum.
Think about it, we already know our psychological systems have biases.
When our nervous system learns that the world is unsafe, it continues scanning our surroundings after we’re no longer in danger.
When our childhood anxiety helps us stay alert in a chaotic home, our body continues defaulting to that pattern when it’s not needed.
When we reinforce the same thought patterns thousands of times - I’m a screw-up, things will never get better, I’m undeserving of love - that programming doesn’t just disappear because we understand where it came from. The momentum carries those patterns forward, even after the circumstances around them begin to change.
That’s why change often feels so disappointing early on. Because even when we show up consistently and do the hard stuff, we continue feeling, and reacting, the same way. The triggers that have been hurting us for years continue getting activated. The emotions of fear and despair continue to live inside us. The thoughts that have been exhausting us for as long as we can remember continue playing on a loop time and time again.
The trend seems unyielding.
Momentum is the reason the first phase of change usually feels like more of the same. Our inner system is still drifting in the same direction it came from.
But as the stock market study uncovered, this continuation is not permanent. In fact, it’s more like the beginning of the end.
While momentum does dominate early, it does not have the power to sustain itself indefinitely. It turns out that when we allow trends time to burn themselves out, equilibrium is restored.
So please, as you go about your days doing the work of healing, remind yourself that the struggles you face—the patterns that continue showing up, the weight of your old ways of thinking, the feelings you’re desperate to outgrow—will all still exist for a while. That’s just how momentum works.
Your system learned to move a certain way, and it takes time for that movement to slow, stop, and shift.
But the work you’re doing now matters. Each mental shift, each mindful moment, each time you make a different choice, even if imperfectly or inconsistently at first, creates drag on the old trajectory. You won’t see it for a while still, but this period – be it six months like for stocks, or six years for us humans – has already started earning you dividends. Below the surface, the old momentum is fading and a new one is beginning to form.
The trends that were set in motion decades ago do eventually weaken. The thoughts that once felt permanent do begin to fade. The reactions that seemed hardwired in us for so many years do ultimately soften. And before you know it, momentum carries you somewhere new.
The market always returns to equilibrium—and so will you.
- Will Watson
A personal note: If you’ve been feeling stuck inside your head lately, I want you to know that I have too. With so much going on out there, some days it’s hard not to let the fear and despair in. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my healing journey over the past two decades, it’s that the right books have a disproportionate ability to help us through hard times, and that having someone who cares to share it with makes all the difference.
If you feel the same and are eager to find someone to act as your conscious witness, I would be honoured to guide you through your own literary healing journey.
Think of it as your own private book club where the only goals are for us to discover the best self-healing books for what you’re going through, and to read them together in a way that I hope will bring more stillness and joy into your life.
To be clear, I’m not a therapist or a life coach, and I have no interest in telling you what to do. I only want to be a consistent presence for you as you uncover both what is missing in your life and how to reclaim it.
If this speaks to you, send me a message and let’s begin. 💛