“Don’t focus on what you cannot change…don’t start to feel sorry for yourself. You just have to focus on what’s next because that’s what you can change.”¹

− Katalin Karikó, 2023 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine

The New Year is well under way, and very soon the Chinese New Year will be ushering in the Year of the Horse. A popular custom in many parts of the world at the start of the New Year is to pick New Year’s resolutions—personal commitments to take steps to better yourself over the coming twelve months. In fact, the custom of setting New Year’s resolutions is believed to have begun more than 4,000 years ago with ancient Babylonians making promises to their gods in the coming New Year.² In modern days, New Year’s resolutions range from losing weight to avoiding alcohol to writing more papers to spending more time with family and friends (or spending more time in the lab!). Most often, these resolutions are an attempt to address some perceived deficiency in ourselves or our lives and make a positive change.

While New Year’s resolutions can serve a useful purpose in thinking about and planning for the year ahead, they can be problematic to implement. Research shows that most resolutions rarely last more than a few weeks, and the second Friday in January has even been coined “Quitters Day”, being the day when most people have already given up on their New Year’s resolutions. Resources abound providing guidance on how to keep chosen resolutions alive past Quitters Day espousing advice such as breaking ambitious resolutions into manageable chunks and reevaluating approaches if those you have tried are not working. Other suggestions include choosing small, incremental habit changes that are achievable.

Regardless of our chosen plans for improvement—either ambitious or incremental—once we begin to implement changes, life frequently throws us off track with unexpected diversions. As the old saying attributed to Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke (1800–1891) goes, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”³ In other words, a plan can be theoretically sound but fall apart immediately when reality comes into play. We have all experienced how we can have the perfect plan—be it for an experiment, calculation, presentation, habit, or trip—and once we begin, things start happening that we failed to foresee. These difficulties can be both frustrating and discouraging. How did we not see them coming?

Further challenges in setting self-improvement efforts can arise when we unknowingly set goals that we find, over time, do not resonate with our nature, cause dissonance with our internal guidance, or are ultimately out of our control. For example, we may have the goal of obtaining an important promotion in the New Year; however, such an outcome is not entirely under our control (more on that later). To add to this goal-setting complexity, it can take months (sometimes years) to notice the impact of a change we introduce as a regular practice or habit. No wonder change is so hard and difficulties with achieving it so commonplace. If you have tried and failed at a New Year’s resolution (or any other attempt to make a significant change), you are in good company.

It is easy to be self-critical, give up, blame ourselves (and others), and stay immersed in the dismal haze of negative emotions that come with the realization that the changes we planned are not happening the way we hoped. Such planning in our minds of how we want to change in the New Year (and other times of the year) is not so different from planning an experiment. With both, we are venturing into the unknown, though instead of the unknown domain of science, such as in an experiment, resolutions and personal change have us entering the unknown domain of our own minds and how we interact with the world. Whenever entering an unknown domain, we can never be certain of the outcome (experiments fail all the time), and in the case of resolutions, unfavorable outcomes can feel like personal failure.

Such experiences of disappointment and failure, both personally and professionally, are an integral part of what it means to be a conscious, thinking human with drive and initiative to grow, learn, and become better with each passing year. If we try things and choose to enter unknown domains, we will experience failures. As we have discussed in previous editorials, there are countless examples of great scientists encountering and overcoming seemingly impossible difficulties in research, and their words can provide encouragement. We can also be absolutely certain that these same great scientists experienced disappointments and failures in their personal lives as well, some of which have been recorded and others lost in time.

One recent and remarkable story of overcoming difficulties came forward with the awarding of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Dr. Katalin Karikó. Karikó was awarded the Nobel Prize with Drew Weissman “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.” With her story, we catch a glimpse of the importance of determination, self-knowledge, and focusing on what is truly important in research and life over external success. Karikó became very familiar with difficulties and setbacks throughout her tumultuous career. She credits the work of Dr. János Hugo Bruno “Hans” Selye, a well-known Hungarian–Canadian behavioral scientist, for her knowledge of how to deal with the difficulties in life. As a youth born and raised in Hungary, she read one of his books (in Hungarian) and learned about one of Selye’s mantras, which was, “…you have to focus on things you can change.”⁴ This statement had a profound influence on her attitude throughout her career.

Although now a celebrated Nobel laureate, Karikó, a biochemist, experienced many discouraging events in her career that would have made most scientists give up and walk away from research, defeated. Her first postdoctoral position at the University of Szeged, Hungary, where she earned her Ph.D., was eliminated because of lack of funding. She then received an offer to be a postdoctoral researcher with Robert J. Suhadolnik at Temple University, USA. When she chose to leave Suhadolnik’s group for another position, he attempted to have her deported from the country, for which she had to hire a lawyer to fight the accusation and ultimately resulted in her pending job offer being withdrawn. She spent a brief time at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in the USA before receiving an offer from University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), USA, as an Assistant Professor. While at UPenn, Karikó was “…demoted four times.”¹ Unfamiliar with the US academic system, she struggled to get grant funding, and the university administrators presented her with an ultimatum to leave the university or be demoted (yet still allowing her to continue her mRNA studies there). She chose the demotion, which included a salary cut, so she could continue her research. “Why I didn’t stop researching is because I did not crave recognition.”¹ She went on to say, “I felt successful when others considered me unsuccessful because I was in full control of what I was doing.”¹ In other words, Karikó was focused on her day-to-day research efforts and discoveries, not her title, how much funding she had, or how many awards she was garnering during her career. She cared that deeply about her research.

Showing further strength of character, she did not hold grudges against those who did not believe in her or her chosen research direction and interests and those who seemed to want to intentionally keep her down. She commented that, “you don’t have to hold a grudge against somebody, because it poisons you and the other person won’t even remember.”¹ Instead, she used her energy to identify and team up with other researchers that shared her passion for mRNA and how it can be used, including Dr. Drew Weissman, her colleague and fellow Nobel laureate.

Showing further strength of character, she did not hold grudges against those who did not believe in her or her chosen research direction and interests and those who seemed to want to intentionally keep her down. She commented that, “you don’t have to hold a grudge against somebody, because it poisons you and the other person won’t even remember.”¹ Instead, she used her energy to identify and team up with other researchers that shared her passion for mRNA and how it can be used, including Dr. Drew Weissman, her colleague and fellow Nobel laureate.

Focusing change on what is in your control, whether for a New Year’s resolution or other decision you are facing, may not guarantee external successes, such as promotions, copious grant funding, and awards, but it can provide you with a framework that will ensure your time and effort are dedicated to those things you value most. This is why it is essential to like what you are doing in research and choose to do it for the excitement of discovery, not for the goal of becoming a well-known scientist (although that could very well happen in the process!). In an interview after being awarded the Nobel Prize, Karikó remarked, “When you are a scientist, you have to constantly fight the failures and solve problems and difficulties you keep repeating and you don’t understand. You have to focus on what you can do, what your project is.”⁵

Karikó valued the research process and lived for the excitement of learning and making a contribution to mRNA research, regardless of how successful she appeared to the outside world throughout her career. To her great fortune, enduring her arduous path led her to becoming a Nobel laureate, which is indeed a rare outcome. Throughout history, we see that science and the advancement of knowledge are far more impactful and important goals than our individual recognition. This was Karikó’s anchoring position and is one for us all to embrace. “Science is fun, to be a scientist, this is a fun job,” she says, “…you find a solution, and maybe that solution would help somebody…maybe somebody who’s sick and then your discovery can contribute to their healing.”⁵ Focus, then, on changing those things you can control. We wish you all the best in your efforts in the coming Year of the Horse.

Prof. Dr. Xi Zhang

Editor-in-Chief

E-mail:xi@tsinghua.edu.cn

Dr. Donna J. Minton

Director of Publications, CCS

E-mail: donna.minton@chinesechemsoc.org

References:

1. Shrikant, A. Nobel Prize Winner Katalin Karikó was ‘Demoted 4 Times’ at Her Old Job. How she persisted: ‘You Have to Focus on What’s next’, CNBC Make It, Oct. 6, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/06/nobel-prize-winner-katalin-karik-on-being-demoted-perseverance-.html (accessed Jan 10, 2026)

2. Pruitt, S. The History of New Year’s Resolutions. https://www.history.com/articles/the-history-of-new-years-resolutions (accessed January 10, 2026)

3. Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations; Heinl, R.D., Ed.; United States Naval Institute, 1966, Annapolis, Maryland; p 239.

4. First Reactions. Telephone Interview. The Nobel Prize, Oct 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2023/kariko/interview/ (accessed Jan 12, 2026)

5. Transcript from an interview with Katalin Karikó; The Nobel Prize. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2023/kariko/217971-interview-transcript/ (accessed Jan 12, 2026)

Link for the original text:

https://doi.org/10.31635/ccschem.026.202600123ed1