The election results are in, and your candidate lost. These last 18 months were for nothing. Woe betide us! It’s time to batten down the hatches and get ready for a rough ride, for here comes financial Armageddon. How do we protect ourselves from impending doom?Can you meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same? It is a question posed by the poet Rudyard Kipling, in his magnificent poem ‘If…’. Perhaps Kipling can guide us today?If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirsHedge fund manager John Paulson made his name when he recognized something that most of America had missed, namely the house price bubble caused by sub-prime lending. When the market crashed in 2008 Paulson walked out with an estimated $2.5 billion profit.Stick to what you know and let your knowledge guide you.If you can trust yourself when all men doubt youIt was Warren Buffett who said “Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy”. He has backed up those words with action time and again – from when he refused to invest in tech stocks in ’99, to when he bought into Goldman Sachs right in the midst of the great recession in ’08.Have courage in your convictions.If you can wait and not be tired by waitingTerry Smith, a London maverick whose mutual fund Fundsmith has delivered an incredible 20% compound annual returns for the last 5 years said “’we just try to find good companies, try not to overpay and then do nothing”. Smith’s fund has a negative portfolio turnover ratio.Invest for the long term and do not react impulsively.If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are goneApple co-founder Ron Wayne sold his stake in the company for $800. He had differences with Steve Jobs and felt that Jobs was too difficult to work with. Wayne left and sold his share in 1976. Had he simply held onto those stocks they would be worth $35 billion today!The market rewards patience.If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run……yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it. And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!