Many factors will affect your career success. Some of them are out of your control. You generally can't control, for example, who will review your work, or what the fads will be in psychology at a given point of your career. But there are so many things you can control – how you choose to teach, the research you choose to do, the service you decide to perform.

When Bob was in graduate school, he often wondered which of his colleagues would succeed and which would not. He wondered too whether he would succeed. During the early years after graduate school, he heard a lot about his various graduate-school colleagues. As the years went by, however, he heard about more and more of them, less and less. The ones who started to disappear into the woodwork were not the ones who seemed to be less intelligent, or less creative, or less willing to work hard. Rather, the ones who disappeared, he thought, had a different challenge.

Over the course of a lifetime, many things unexpectedly go wrong. One may become ill; family members may become ill; family members may unexpectedly die; one may end up getting divorced; one may lose a child; one may lose one's job; one may get into financial difficulties. The list is endless. It is hard to get through a life without some really major things going wrong. In the end, the graduate-school colleagues that stayed visible were the ones who had high levels of resilience, or grit. They could get through the tough times without just giving up. They plowed ahead, looking forward to better days, and those days came, sooner or later. So our best advice to you is to remember that the courses of a professional life and a personal life are almost never smooth. Things go wrong, often in quick succession. The people who succeed are the people who forge ahead – who continue to perform while looking ahead to a better future. As you wend your way through your career and your life, keep in mind that, no matter what happens, there is always the possibility of a better future. Put your mind to making that better future, and you will make the most of your career.