State of the ArtThe Current Landscape of my Expert Focus

What’s going on

• Define “star” as one who positively stands out, whether socially, academically, athletically

• Stanford consists of high school stars not used to failure

• Problem: In an environment full of former stars, many students may no longer feel as special • Even being average hurts

• Potential imposter syndrome present after initial disillusionment

What needs to be done

• Need to adapt to their new situation

• Maintain focus

• Stay positive

Approach

• Dominantly a mindset change—not very many solutions in this arena

• Not trying to make them be stars again

• May be unrealistic

• We are looking for a way of combating the STRESS associated with the failure, not a way of eliminating these failures

Current Solutions

• Counseling

• Social stigma

• Very occasional

• Not a popular service

Current Solutions

• Realizing you’re not alone in failure

• www.fmylife.com

• Many are fake

• Posts too distant from user’s situation-humorous but unreal

• Forums/support groups

• None specific to “Stanford students failing”

• This is a special case

• For a solution based on environment, specificity is key to get the connection

Current Solutions

• Stanford Resilience Project• Links to failure->success stories

• Hitting the correct audience, but• Not widely known

• Few make first step of going to site- requires admitting they feel like failures

• Eventual successes of the stories may actually be discouraging because not everyone is as lucky• Remember our approach: we are dealing with

stress of failure, not getting rid of failure

Current Solutions

• Daily inspirational quote/song of the day

• May become habitual

• There is only so much a generic quote can do when not directly applicable to the situation

• Once a day = feel good in morning, end up feeling bad again

A New Solution

• Random texts throughout the day that prompt user to think of 3 positive things about their current situation, whether in life or in their moment

• Personal to user (user is author)

• Frequent and consistent

• Not embarrassing

• Can increase positivity without revealing that you feel like a failure

Summary

• Many flaws with existing solutions can be solved with random texting as a prompt for this mindfulness exercise to increase positivity and spark renewal

• Connection of this exercise to a text = Type of behavior change

Works Cited

• www.fmylife.com

• http://www.stanford.edu/dept/undergrad/cgi-bin/drupal/resilience

• http://www.facebook.com/famousquotes

• http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html

• http://news.stanford.edu/thedish/?p=10701

• http://www.stanford.edu/group/bridge/Bridge/About_Us.html