You care deeply about your work. And adversity strikes hard. Imagine the emotions: shame, embarrassment, loneliness.
What do you do?
Remember the most important motivational trick of professional athletes:
1. Everyone thinks you don’t have a chance.
2. Yet you are capable of beating the best.
To overcome insurmountable paper disadvantages requires psychological rocket fuel.
Remember the space race? The Soviets were smarter, better organized; they racked up all of the previous ‘firsts’ in spaceflight. Yet only one flag stands on the moon.
And take the fact that visits have stopped not as a lesson in the silliness of the pursuit. Take it instead as an homage to the essential characteristic of human progress: the everlasting desire to (figuratively, these days) annihilate the opposition.
Take adversity as an opportunity to focus your mind on a critical weakness and eliminate it. Press hard on the nerves of identity politics: it’s ‘us versus them’ and even though they all doubt us we know we’re the best.
Not Unreasonable 