Navigating the Doctoral Journey: Empowering Scholars with a Resilience Toolkit to Prevent Stress, Burnout and Self-Doubt

This course is for early-career academics who want to increase their resilience and well-being.

Researchers must sustain a high level of performance, often work long stretches in isolation, and are exposed to frequent critique and tight deadlines. Given the demanding nature of the academic career and lifestyle, struggles with motivation, procrastination, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and stress are common. However, young researchers who learn to navigate these challenges, increase their resilience, and actively cultivate well-being are likelier to thrive personally and professionally.

This workshop underscores the integral relationship between resilience and success in navigating the Ph.D. process, emphasizing the role of well-being as a cornerstone for personal and professional growth and success. It gives participants a set of evidence-based tools and strategies to recognize and counteract stress signals, manage energy, increase capacity, handle critique, maintain motivation, and overcome challenges such as procrastination, perfectionism, and self-doubt. Participants will learn about cutting-edge research on the science of well-being, habit formation, self-awareness, and self-management. Participants will leave the workshop with an understanding of what they can actively do to increase their resilience and cultivate their well-being within their unique context and given their individual preferences, circumstances, challenges, and strengths.

Learning Outcomes:

Over the course of this workshop, participants will:

Gain an understanding of the science of well-being and resilience
Increase their overall self-awareness and understand the relationship between self-awareness, self-management, and social-emotional intelligence
Understand the concept of P.E.R.MA+ and how it can help them increase their well-being and thrive in their personal and professional lives
Understand the concept of energy management and its implications for productivity and well-being
Know what they can concretely do when faced with challenges such as a drop in motivation, procrastination, perfectionism, and self-doubt.