Back in the early days of coal mining, workers used canaries to test the air below ground for carbon-monoxide levels. Miners would carry these small birds with them for safety, because a dangerously high level of gasses would affect them first, giving the miner a chance to escape. If a financial canary flew into the depths of your current fixed-income holdings, would it come out unharmed? For more than a few investors, I suspect the answer is not what they would expect.

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How does this relate to the health of your investment portfolio? More directly than you might think.

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While those words may sound like a bunch of financial mumbo jumbo, getting reacquainted with them could quite literally save you from yourself by helping you understand specific actions to take if you are uncomfortable with the volatility in your portfolio.

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Yet investors who view bear markets as something that must be avoided at all costs are falling into exactly the same type of limited thinking. Here’s why the best way to make it through current market volatility is to actually “befriend the bear.”

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As you may recall, this was the month we were all reminded about what “volatility” means. As the markets reacted to a devaluated yuan and plunging oil prices, every one of us had a real, live test of how comfortable we are–or are not–with the asset allocation in our portfolios.

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Here’s how it works. Instead of telling yourself all the things you shouldn’t spend money on, you focus on maximizing the amount of joy you get out of each dollar you do spend. Rather than allowing spending restraints to drain your will power and sap your serenity, you focus on deliberately increasing your happiness through targeted, deliberate spending.

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On the surface, advice to “buy what you know” is well-intentioned. After all, saving and investing early and often helps a young investor harness the amazing power of compounding.

How amazing? Let’s use an example. Suppose a young person, Logan, starts saving $5,000 a year for retirement at age 25, continues to save that amount each year until age 65 and earns 7% annual returns. Logan will end up with a $1 million nest egg. Let’s say Logan waits until age 45 to start saving for retirement. Logan will need to save nearly $25,000 a year to end up with that same $1 million, or will have to generate an annual rate of return north of 20% (a figure that would put Logan on par with Warren Buffett, but not a statistically likely event, to put it mildly). So, mathematically, the advice to save early on, and to have a significant portion–if not all–of your retirement savings in equities, is correct.

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The beauty of the market is that it already incorporates all of our collective expectations about the Fed’s likely future actions in the current yield curve. What is the yield curve? It is a visual depiction of the interest rates at various maturity dates for bonds of the same credit quality. The curve can be upward or downward sloping. (Historically, an inverted yield curve has predicted an economic slowdown.) Unless you’re positive that you are smarter than the market, the yield curve is your best guide for what interest rates will be in the future.

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Educational background: What degrees has the fund manager earned, and from what schools? Is the fund manager a certified financial adviser (CFA)?

Professional experience: Does the portfolio manager have previous experience on the research side? If so, how much? How many years has the portfolio manager worked in the industry?

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Alas, history has taught us time and again that simply chasing the financial version of a “shiny new object” (recent performance, for example) is a fool’s errand. New worries about declining commodity prices, hefty dollar-denominated debt exposure and decelerating gross-domestic-product growth are causing significant and fundamental concerns about emerging markets.

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