Psychological flexibility is an essential trait for academics

Recently I came across the idea of psychological flexibility.* Of course, it's something I've tried for a long time to put into practice but I've not had a catchy name for it until now. The concept is essentially that a psychologically flexible person will have their decisions and behaviour shaped by long term goals and values and not by their immediate circumstances. This is so important for academics, particularly scientists, because most of what we do is pretty underwhelming: scouring the literature for relevant papers, setting up complicated (and often tedious) experiments that fail more often than we like to admit, teaching students who just don't 'get it' (or just can't be bothered applying themselves), submitting grant proposals that get rejected more often than accepted, applying for positions and getting outcompeted by one of the other 200 applicants, the list goes on. When facing trials like this, if we're not psychologically flexible, it might be easy to give up. It might be easy to look at your failed experiments, rejected grant proposal and struggling Masters student and just give up and become a baker or something! At those times, it's important to remember why you became a scientist in the first place; it's essential that you remember what your goals are and what you value; most of all, it's important that you act in accordance with your goals and values to overcome any immediate setbacks. We must look at our current circumstances and then let our long term goals and values inform us what we should do next.

There are two values that see me through the challenges of academic science: 1) a passion for discovering something new. We're finding out things about the world that no one has ever known. Just stop and think about that for a minute. It's amazing, right? 2) A passion for teaching. It's a privileged position to be tasked with training the next generation of scientists, innovators, thinkers and world-changers. By teaching, we can multiply our impact for good in the world.

What difficult circumstances are you facing in your academic journey? What goals and values are helping you to move forward?

*This term was used by an article pinned to a notice board in my department without any indication of author or publication name, so I can't give a citation.