7 Steps To Staying Sane When Getting Negative Feedback

Here's an article I wrote for the New York Enterprise Report for entrepreneurs; however, it applies to any work situation. Enjoy and leave a comment if you've found this useful. 

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Your business is like your baby, and if someone says it’s ugly or that something is wrong with it, it’s only natural for you to go a little crazy inside. If you’re enlightened enough to not be emotionally attached to your business, hearing negative feedback still isn’t easy because it points to more work and the fact that, maybe, you’re just not where you need to be as a leader. Here’s what you need to know about how to receive negative feedback from your employees and others in your life about your business or how you run it.

 

3 Things You Must Know about Negative Feedback

1. It’s not you, it’s your brain. Our brains have a negativity bias, which means that our attention automatically focuses on what’s wrong, bad, or threatening almost twice as much as it focuses on the good stuff.
2. It’s true; no pain, no gain. Dealing with the discomfort of negative feedback is like lifting heavy weights—it doesn’t feel good in the moment, but it’s helping you build a stronger business and a more resilient attitude. Avoid avoiding the feedback; welcome it.
3. Stick to the facts. If your employees tell you they don’t like the new product description you came up with, it doesn’t mean you have an unworthy product, it just means you need a copy writer. 

How to Handle It: The 7-Step Plan to Sanity
Let’s imagine that a long-time, trusted employee just barged into your office unannounced with some negative feedback—a combo of constructive comments and some rather destructive, borderline-personal ones. Your goal is to stay calm, receive the necessary information, and move on quickly and peacefully. Here’s how:

1. Listen Actively. More than 80 percent of communication is non verbal, so use your body to communicate “I hear you.” Unfold your arms and legs, nod regularly, and lean towards the employee. Keep your voice calm and friendly. 
2. Stay curious. Regardless of the quality or validity of the feedback ask yourself, “What can I learn from this? What am I seeing that I wasn’t aware of before? This helps mitigate defensiveness.
3. Don’t interrupt, especially to defend yourself: By exercising control of yourself, you will feel more in control of the conversation. If the feedback is meant to rile you and you don’t take the bait, your employee will ease up naturally. 
4. Say thank you. It’s taken time, courage, and lots of reflection for your employee to share his thoughts. Whether or not you agree with him, let the first thing you say be authentic and appreciative: “First off, I just want you to know that I really appreciate the thought and time that you put into your sharing this feedback. Conversations like these help us grow.”
5. Recap what you heard using the employee’s language. Not only is this satisfying to the employee, because he feels he has been heard, but it helps you both process the discussion. Bonus points if you say “I” instead of “you” when possible to signal your ability to take responsibility. For example, “I am hearing that the way I handled the meeting on Friday led to a lot of confusion,” versus, “It seems like you don’t know what’s going on.”
6. Give yourself some space. It’s really hard to thoughtfully respond in the moment, so build in some padding time: “Again, I really value your feedback. If you don’t mind, I’d like to give this some quality thought. I have a packed week, can I get back to you next Thursday?” 
7. Close honorably. Follow up with your response when you promised. Thank the employee again, recap what you heard, share what you think, and what action, if any, you’ll take. “Thanks again for your feedback. I understand now that I wasn’t as clear as I could have been on Friday. Moving forward, I’ll have Nancy send out a recap of next steps so we avoid confusion.”

Dealing with Your Employees
These seven steps can be used to deal with negative feedback coming from anyone—from your employees to your mother-in-law to your dry cleaner. But when dealing with an employee, you may want to consider more specific steps to receive and grow from the feedback. Consider this:

• Make it easy and regular. Hold regular office hours or create a weekly Town Hall meeting (like Google’s founders) and take any questions or comments as they come up. This shows transparency, courage, and care.
• Validate what you’re hearing with some research. Conduct some one-on-one conversations with key stakeholders and send out an anonymous survey using surveymonkey.com to gather more information.

Dealing with Your Significant Other 
We tend to have more boundaries at the office than we do at home, which can lead to some messy conversations. Create agreements about how and when to get negative feedback from your spouse, especially as it relates to your business.

• Pick a good time to talk about it. Help your sweetheart read your signs. For example, calmly request, “Honey, I really value your feedback. At the end of a hard day, I’m not able to really listen as attentively as I’d like to. Weekends are better or if I have advance notice at least I can get in the right headspace.”
• Discuss how you want to receive feedback and why. Are you the kind of person that likes to small-talk and gently make your way into a difficult conversation? Or do you just want it direct and to the point? “Sweetheart, it’s really hard for me to only hear negative feedback. It would be really helpful if, in addition to what you think we could do better, you also mention what we do well. Otherwise I feel really deflated.”

Dealing with Your Peers
Even though our friends want to help, sometimes they just don’t understand. Consider this:

• Where is the feedback coming from? Is the feedback coming from experience, or is it just an opinion? Does this person truly understand your business or accurately represent your customer? If not, get a second opinion.
• Just say, “Thanks for sharing.” You aren’t responsible for responding to everyone—especially to a friend or peer. Just say, “Got it! Thanks for sharing your thoughts,” and move on. 

Hacking Happiness With The Bulletproof Executive

I had a blast speaking with The Bulletproof Executive, Dave Asprey. If you don't know Dave, he's a well known Silicon Valley success, turned bio/life hacker. Dave has spent over $300k to experiment and explore how he to perform and live better. I'm very inspired by his journey and the extremes he's gone through to learn the information that's subtle, hidden, and and often left untold. 

In the end he asks me for my top three pieces of advice to skyrocket performance. Here's a quick snapshot of those tips:

1. Learn how to focus your attention - because that's everything

2. Pay attention to your well-being - because that impacts your performance and everything

3. Don't take yourself to seriously - because most things aren't that serious

Enjoy!

Stella

Stella Grizont's Advice Featured in Metro Newspaper

Enjoy this article written by Vicki Salemi, Career Expert, featured in New York's Metro Newspaper

Amid endless assignments, looming deadlines and stress, college life isn’t all a bowl of cherries — especially as the winter break recedes into the past. January is a time when students often struggle with the blues, but the up-and-coming curriculum of positive psychology is making its mark.

Just ask Stella Grizont, founder of well-being learning company WOOPAAH and instructor of “The Science of Happiness” at the online learning company Udemy.com. Grizont earned her master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and points out the new science understands what makes life worth living from an empirical evidence-based perspective. She says that positive psychology focuses on what’s right with people and “how to go from zero to 10-plus.”

The relatively new field dives into theory and application with classes like “Approaches to the Good Life” and “Applied Positive Interventions.” Grizont learned that exuding positive emotions and experiencing a generally high level of life satisfaction have a huge impact on one’s life span. Get this — you’re twice as likely to be alive after 65 if you’re happy versus unhappy, you’re three times more creative on the job and 30 percent more productive at work. “In fact, people even think you’re hotter,” she dishes.

And it’s not about trying to be happy all the time either. According to Tal Ben-Shahar, best-selling author of “Choose the Life You Want,” a person can endure emotional pain at times and still be happy overall in the sense of an “overall experience of pleasure and meaning.”

Recognizing that happy people enjoy positive emotions while perceiving their lives as purposeful, Ben-Shahar says it’s critical for students to give themselves permission to have feelings. Instead of ignoring them, uncomfortable emotions should rise to the surface. “Allowing ourselves to experience emotions such as envy or anger or fear or sadness is central to a happy and fulfilling life.”

Not only should students acknowledge emotions, they should slow down and simplify daily life. Ben-Shahar, a former Harvard professor of positive psychology, says we’re generally too busy trying to squeeze in more and more activities into less and less time. He adds it’s OK to not check emails for a few hours and it’s OK to not have a phone on 24/7. “Doing less instead of more unlocks the key to happiness. We are in a better position to enjoy the treasures of happiness that are inside us and around us.”

Such treasures, he says, can be found by focusing on the positive and expressing gratitude, whether it’s by keeping a regular gratitude journal, meditating or praying. “We too often take the positive elements of our lives for granted. We have to learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in life, from people to food, from nature to a smile.”

Four tips to building happiness habits:

1. Celebrate Thanksgiving today. “Appreciate three things that are going right in your life right now and write them down. Do this daily,” explains Grizont.

2. Prioritize people. Spend time with or call those you love to tell them you care; research finds that relationships drive happiness.

3. Work your strengths. Identify your top strength and find one new way to apply it. She notes, “Researchers found this can decrease depression.”

4. Do three nice deeds daily. It’s not just enough to be kind every once in a while; Grizont says studies reveal the benefits of doing good rubs off when you’re at it several times a day. Hold the door open, give a compliment, offer a helping hand.

- See more at: http://www.metro.us/newyork/lifestyle/education/2014/01/20/beat-winter-depression-and-get-happy/#sthash.I16ugnTF.dpuf

3 Things To Avoid When Setting New Year Resolutions

I love this time of year—it's the perfect opportunity to let go and re-set. Of course, most of us associate “resolutions” with the New Year, and for a lot of people, resolutions have a bad connotation. They see them as an opportunity for failure instead of success. If that sounds familiar, let me help you reframe the way you view resolutions with these three attitude-altering tips:  

1. Avoid starting with a to-do list. Get clear on how you want to FEEL and BE instead.
My resolutions are usually not actions; they’re the resulting sensation of my actions.  For a lot of people, resolutions begin and end with what they want to do—with no consideration for the quality of experience they want to have. For example, you make a resolution to “go to the gym three times a week” without focusing on why you want to go and how you want to feel. I call that a recipe for disappointment if not disaster. Let’s face it, feeling obligated to go to the gym just because you said so is a sure set-up for failure. 

But, by starting with the qualities you want to feel—such as, more energized and vital—rather than the activity itself, you easily turn an obligation into a choice that has a higher purpose. Which, in turn, allows you to open up to any number of creative ways to fulfill your intention throughout the new year, ultimately resulting in the feeling of taking care of yourself…and success! Maybe you end up going to the gym, maybe you drink more green juice, or maybe you take more time for rest. 

Now know that I'm not dismissing the value of setting specific goals (you know I like my SMART goals). I am merely recommending that you start with the quality of experience you want to achieve. For me, one quality I'm bringing into 2014 is soul-nurturing fun. As you can see from the photo above, I got started early :). Other examples of qualities include: patience, excellence, gratitude, focus, ease, playfulness, etc.  

2. Avoid "should-ing" all over yourself.
It's so easy to fall into the trap of, “I shoulds.” Oh, I should be more this or do more that this year. Know what I mean? It’s a not-so-subtle way of self-criticism. So before committing to anything, first try it out in your imagination. Ask yourself, if I experienced just 2% more (fill in the blank), how would I feel? Pay close attention to how your body and spirit respond. What would be different? Does it make you feel dragged down, freed up or nothing much at all? 
To avoid a continuing case of the “I shoulds,” go with what makes you feel lighter, freer, energized and hopeful. Choosing what feels difficult doesn't necessarily make you stronger, but it most likely creates unnecessary resistance. Choosing something because it sounds good doesn’t do you any good either. This leads me to my next tip...

3. Avoid fear-driven resolutions and be aware of your motivation.
Examine what's driving your desires. Is it fear? Obligation? Expectation? Is it your heart? In the Accomplishment lecture in my online class I talk about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation (Lecture 31). Intrinsic motivation is when the cause to do something comes from within; it’s your own organic interest and desire. Extrinsic motivation is when the desire is driven by external reward, such as money, promotion, grades or approval. External rewards aren’t bad; they’re just  not as motivating long term. You’re more likely to stick with intrinsically motivated desires. 

Remember that your new year resolutions are YOURS! You get to choose! This is where you get to play and be like a kid in a toy store. It’s your year, so you get to decide what to make of it. Avoid over thinking, analyzing and judging. Give yourself permission to go towards what feels most energizing—to choose whatever "toy" excites you versus the one you think is “right” for you. Ask yourself what intentions would be most loving or freeing for you and your well-being.  

I'd love to hear what resolutions you've set up for yourself and any tips you have for keeping up with those resolutions. Please share away below!

Wishing you a bounty of experiences imbued with your desired qualities, along with the ability to recognize and appreciate them as they come.

My best to you,
Stella

Embodiment and Self Love with Jay Fields

I spoke with Jay Fields, author of "homebody yoga, 28 days to bring you home to your body & to a life led with purpose," and got real heart centered around how to deal with discomfort, how to self love, and how to set your new year intentions. Enjoy this video with a cup of tea - it's about 30 minutes. In the meanwhile, here are some of my favorite insights: 

• Self love is presence. It's allowing yourself to be and feel whatever is true for you in the moment.

• Notice how you like to give and receive love - how can you apply that for yourself. Take the 5 love languages quiz to gain more insight. 

• When you set your intentions for the New Year, be mindful around what's motivating those intentions. Is it fear? Is it from a place of not being enough? Are you trying to achieve something because it will have an impact on how others view you. Instead, consider what "quality" or "feeling" you want to have more of in the New Year.  

Wishing you all a bounty of joy in 2014,

Stella