The Neuroscientist Who Learned That Not Knowing Is Progress | Isabel Fuentes | 3/3

January 17 • Circlo Podcast

Circlo Podcast

The Wisdom — Separating Identity From Outcome

The Wisdom: When Not Getting a Result Is Also a Result

This is the third and final article out of three parts of my interview with Isabel, a young neuroscience researcher.

If you missed the earlier parts, start with The Neuroscientist Who Discovered Herself Through Change. Then continue with The Neuroscientist Driven by Curiosity: Isabel’s Research and Purpose.

We shared a thoughtful podcast-style conversation in which she educated me — and will hopefully educate you — on themes that transcend the laboratory. The goal of this interview was simple: to grow both personally and through her scientific perspective.

Above is the full video for this section of the interview. The complete interview with all sections is available below.

Complete Interview:How We Are Formed: Brain Development, Change, and Identity | Isabel Fuentes

The Art of Scientific Decision-Making

This lesson is incredible, so I highly recommend you listen to this part of the podcast. There is a reflection made from the world of research and neuroscience that can be directly applied to our daily lives.

I thought it would be interesting for her to share how she deals with decisions and changing the course of a research project. When do you know the moment to make the change, not before and not after.

She explained that right now, since she’s starting and following a line of research that already existed in the laboratory, she has to consider whether she wants to continue with this or look for something new. In that moment you consider it and you have to look at the observed results. It’s also important to see a lot what other people are doing, to see if more or less what you’ve obtained fits with what they’re doing. She also makes small experiments to see if it works.

The Liberation of Failed Experiments

Science often implies that you can have hypotheses that aren’t correct. You can design experiments very well and in the end they don’t work out, simply because what you were thinking wasn’t correct. There it’s important to understand that not obtaining a result is also a result.

Sometimes things not working out means that’s not the way.

The danger comes when you become too attached to your idea. There are times when people become very obsessed with an idea and do many experiments trying to make them fit what they had in their head. Every good scientist must have an open mind: believe that something is happening, but be conscious that it might not be like that. You have to know how to interpret experiments knowing that your hypothesis might not be correct.

Separating the Work from the Self

I raised a point about the personal nature of research questions. When you’ve formulated a question, invested time and energy, there’s a natural tendency to feel that if the hypothesis fails, you’ve failed. How does one separate the idea from the self?

Isabel explained that on one hand, there always has to be a component of enthusiasm, something that motivates you. In the end, this profession is very vocational. Sometimes you have to dedicate many hours to do an experiment, sometimes nothing comes out and you have to keep going. For that, it’s very important to have a connection with what you’re doing, that moves you a bit.

But it’s very important not to take it personally. In the end, science is unpredictable. When you’re studying something, you don’t really know what you’re discovering. You don’t even know if everything believed until now is wrong. So it’s very important to have that mentality of: okay, it might not be like this.

What I said is totally true — it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. The idea is more of an unease you have, something you make yours, but failing or succeeding as a scientist has much more to do with how you design experiments. If you’ve designed them well, done the experiment correctly, and analyzed the results well, that it doesn’t align with the question you had in mind doesn’t say anything about you. What you can control is how you design it. Everything in your hands is how you approach it, but that the idea later isn’t how you thought is not in your hands.

The Courage to Pivot

That’s very important to have clear, and for people to know. And that not by abandoning an idea and changing you’re worse than another person. On the contrary, many times that has to do with having the courage to say: I’m leaving it and I’m focusing it another way or I’m moving to something else, and nothing happens at all.

This wisdom — that pivoting isn’t failure but courage — applies far beyond the laboratory. How many of us cling to goals, relationships, or life paths long after they’ve stopped serving us, simply because we’ve invested so much?

Lesson

As our conversation drew to a close, Isabel and I reflected on how these insights apply to daily life. These ideas you acquire through research and through the reflections you make can be applied to day-to-day life. Sometimes this also applies to personal goals, objectives. Saying: I wanted to reach this and the idea has changed, and now what? Since I was young I wanted to do this and now what? But how good that these ideas that you acquire through research and reflections can be applied to daily life.

The phrase that stays with me is simple but profound: Not obtaining a result is also a result.

When our efforts don’t produce what we expected, we haven’t failed — we’ve learned. We’ve discovered what doesn’t work, which narrows the field of what might. The fact that reality didn’t conform to our hypothesis doesn’t diminish any of that.

This applies to career pivots, to relationships that don’t work out despite our best efforts, to creative projects that don’t land as we hoped, to personal goals that turn out not to align with who we’re becoming. Not every path we start is meant to be completed. Not every question we ask will be answered the way we expect. And that’s not just okay — it’s how we grow.

Closing: The Complete Journey

Speaking with Isabel across these three conversations left me moved and inspired.

Isabel embodies something rare: the combination of rigorous scientific thinking with deep human empathy. She pursues knowledge not for recognition, but because behind every experiment is a person whose life could be improved. She faces uncertainty with curiosity rather than fear. She knows herself well enough to pause and reflect, even in chaos. She has learned to separate her identity from her outcomes, understanding that what matters is the quality of her process, not whether reality confirms her hypothesis.

From a small town in Andalucía to international research centers. From curiosity about the brain to a mission to help children. From experiments that fail to wisdom about what failure really means. Isabel’s journey reminds us that that transformations happen through deep thought, and personal connection to our work, lead though a curiosity to abosrve and change when the time is right.

She discovers her surroundings at the same time she discovers herself. She seeks to understand how the brain forms while forming her own path. She studies chronic conditions while learning to live with uncertainty. And in doing so, she shows us that science and life are not separate endeavors — they are both about asking better questions, staying open to unexpected answers, and never losing sight of the human beings we hope to serve.

Not obtaining a result is also a result. Remember this when your plans don’t work out. Remember this when you need the courage to change direction. When no result is your result it is as critical moment to pivot, reflect and evaluate. Isabel has taught us that the truest success isn’t reaching the destination we imagined, but becoming the person the journey requires us to be.

Thank you, Isabel — for three conversations that educated, inspired, and transformed. For showing that the best scientists are those who remain endlessly curious about both the brain and the human experience. For reminding us that our greatest discoveries often come not from confirming what we thought, but from embracing what we didn’t expect.

The person behind the microscope is someone we can all learn from — not just about neuroscience, but about courage, curiosity, and what it means to live a meaningful life.