Science is hard. At the bench, even the simplest procedures, such as cloning or genotyping, can – and likely will – fail at some point. Projects take years to complete. Grant proposals are rejected. Paper submissions get barely a glance from editors, and if they do go out for review, long lists of additional experiments are often requested by anonymous peers. It is rare to get positive feedback on your work when it is constantly viewed through the critical lens of scientific enquiry.
So why would someone endure this barrage of negative experiences? Scientists have a passion for what we are studying; finding something new feels like hearing a beautiful song or seeing the most amazing sunset. We have a quest for learning about the world that propels our desire to take the next step towards discovery. Much as artists, actors or musicians strive to fulfil a creative vision, scientists delve into the unknown to fulfil the quest for understanding.
Yet passion and desire alone cannot sustain a scientist through this long roller coaster of a career. Like artists, we must also build resilience – and one important strategy for me has been to adopt a “celebrate everything” philosophy.
This mindset sees even the smallest accomplishment, such as making a figure or submitting a grant application, as worthy of celebration. I am not talking about setting off fireworks or going out for an expensive dinner after every such minor success; small, tangible rewards can help, but the point is to inculcate a mindset of appreciation for your effort and the process of scientific discovery. Celebrating everything allows you to notice the positive aspects of what you are doing every day and enables you to motivate yourself to overcome large and small roadblocks in your path to fulfilling your goals.
What this looks like in practice varies by career stage. For early-career scientists doing benchwork, careful planning is important to balance technically challenging experiments (those likely to fail the first few times) with those more likely to produce results. But even when experiments failed, I would tell myself that I was glad to have got the first failure out of the way so I could change the parameters and succeed next time. And I celebrated such small milestones with sweets or chocolate, retail therapy, cooking or gathering with friends.
As I became more established in my career, I began to celebrate every lecture given, every grant submitted, with an “I did it!” (imagining kicking my heels with joy), taking pride and making time for myself during the evening or weekend.
The various steps to publication also offer multiple opportunities for self-reward: submission, being sent for review, resubmission and then, hopefully, acceptance – sometimes at more than one journal. The road is long and is often a battle, yet celebrating each step can bolster the spirit and provide moments of gratification and honour. Champagne after the acceptance is common, and some labs keep the bottle as a memento of each publication. But celebration should not be all or nothing; even if your paper is ultimately rejected, being sent out for review by a prestigious journal is not an insignificant achievement.
Nor should celebration be a solo event, ideally. In meetings with my lab team, we come together to acknowledge success and discuss challenges in order to build trust and support. One strategy I use is “pair-share”. Lab members discuss prompts that I give them – general questions such as “what is going well in your project right now?” or “what do you want to improve this year?” – with a partner, and then, if they feel comfortable, with the larger group. Another group activity could be building a “mural of victory”, where pictures of important experiments or papers are posted.
Scientific research itself supports the benefits of a “celebration” mindset. Work by the social psychologist Fred Bryant has shown that “savouring” – defined as “the capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences in one’s life” – can help you build stronger relationships, improve your mental health and allow you to find creative solutions to problems. According to Bryant, savouring involves sharing your good feelings with others, mentally capturing the moment, congratulating yourself, having gratitude and avoiding negative thinking.
These behaviours can allow scientists to savour their past successes, their present challenges and even the anticipation of future growth and exciting experiences. Instead of focusing on how hard a scientific career can be, I can think about how much joy I will experience sharing our work at a conference or watching a new student grow during their tenure in my laboratory.
Adopting a celebration mindset can also be one strategy to reduce reactivity to stress, which is a predictor for future health and disease outcomes. And it can combat the negative impact of stress on creativity by giving a feeling of control over stressful situations.
Ultimately, these “celebration” strategies give my team – and me as their leader – tools not only to produce excellent science but also to make the road to success more fulfilling and enjoyable.
Valerie Horsley is professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology and associate professor of dermatology at Yale University.
