The interesting thing is that it's often not about the negative feedback itself.

It's often something about use as a manager or as an employee.

It's something about your history.

That's Ayala Fishbok.

She's a psychologist at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business

and the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation.

It's something about the situation in which you get this feedback

that leads you to either conclude that there is nothing I can do

or I need to walk harder, I need to solve this problem.

Maybe you're intrigued, maybe you want to find a way

because the path that you were trying doesn't work.

Whether you go one way or another is often not in the feedback itself

but in the context in which this feedback is being provided.

You might not know this about me, but I love Russian literature.

Actually, let me revise that statement.

I don't love Russian literature.

I do love one particular Russian novelist.

His name is Eugene Vodolosky and the reason I love him is he has amazing thoughts

in every one of his novels, including this from his novel The Aviator.

Wisdom is experience more than anything, but here's the catch,

experience that's processed, of course, he says,

if there's no processing, then all the bruises you get are useless.

...