It might sound funny to think about the act of failing as a gift, but the reality is that the difference between good and great players (or people in general) is often the willingness to closely examine and scrutinize failure. More simply, everyone likes to talk about the last great day they had, but how many people are willing to revisit a tough loss? Not many — and that’s unfortunate — as there is so much to learn from failure that can be used for better mental toughness and improvement for the future.
Using failure for future success
The old saying “if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got” rings true when discussing the idea of failure. You see, you’ll keep on getting the same results unless you examine failure, and more importantly, learn from failure. When failure is ignored, so, too, are the invaluable learning lessons to help with future success.
None of us want to fail, but we inevitably will. Rather than looking at failure as validation that we are no good, we should instead view failure as a “test run” for future success. So what if you fail — everyone fails — but the true success stories are the ones who examine and scrutinize past failures for nuggets of key information for self-improvement.
Learn how not to make the same mistakes
Insanity is defined in humorous terms as “doing the same thing, yet expecting different results.” If you don’t stop to learn from failure you run the risk of doing exactly that — doing the same things, yet expecting different results. Not only does this prevent you from doing your best, it also leads to increased frustration when you continuously fail, which in turn prohibits confidence growth and increased odds for future success.
So as you can see failure is inevitable, but what you do with failure makes all the difference in the world. It is for this reason that you welcome failure as a teaching tool for future athletic (and life) success!
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