Professor Jennifer Aakeri is a General Professor of Marketing at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and has some great insights stemming from her research on committing to acts that contribute to personal growth and happiness.
- If you pair negative effect, with positive effect, pain is much reduced. For example, make sure you have a supportive partner to offset the eventual setbacks.
- Set up system of rewards for perceived negatives. She gave the example of her life as a researcher, which consists of submitting papers to academic journals, receiving harsh criticism and rejections. Aakeri set up a reward system for receiving rejections, aka necessary feedback. For example, her husband takes her out to dinner if she receives some form of rejection although if she receives positive feedback she takes her husband out to dinner.
- One should take risks. Wayne Gretzky once said “you’ll miss 100% of the shots you never take.”
- Keep track of performance data on your life and business, noting that it’s easier to remind oneself of your progress and promote yourself with a story when you have the numbers on hand.
- Define the worst case scenario, and then devote no more than 1/3rd of your time addressing the concerns. Research shows that people generally go around worrying about major events in their life that make, such as cancer, failing at business, etc, but research shows once the event happens, the worrying leading up to the event is 3 times worse than you’ll feel on the event, which fades 2 or 3 days later before your mood reverts back to its normal state. So you might as well make your normal state as worry free as possible, because chances are, whatever you’re worrying about won’t be as bad as you think, or won’t happen at all.
For additional information view the video below:
Graduate School of Business at Stanford University Professor Jennifer Aaker shares her strategies on top agents of change for women.