Helping Young Athletes Deal with Failure
Failure is never a fun thing to deal with. If I had the choice I would 100% always choose to win or succeed compared to the alternative. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible and our basic instinct as humans is to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. But this is also a very common practice.
What would happen if someone went completely against that instinct though? Instead of running away from failure, they pursued it until they achieved success? How would it look if you started doing that today? How would your life change? Now imagine if your young athlete adopted that same mindset and carried it with them through high school? College? What could that do for them?
Looking at some of the most influential and successful people like Serena Williams, Bruce Lee, Arnold Schwarzenegger; one powerful characteristic that each of them share is their ability to embrace failure. The fear of it can be paralyzing, but it can also be the difference in reaching the goals we set or falling short (believe me I know).
Julius…stop with the explaining and tell me how to do this already! You’re right. Here are a few things to think about to get the ball rolling.
Reframe Failures:
It’s easy for athletes to instantly go into beating themselves up after a loss, poor grade on a test, or a challenging practice. The ease at which this happens can quickly turn the action into a debilitating habit. The goal here is to create an advantageous habit focused around this negative (and inevitable) occurrence. I encourage young athletes to ask leading questions after the failure happens concerning what they can do to improve their performance in the future, things they did well and things they can work on, etc. Using this simple technique can work in any aspect of their life moving forward; especially their schoolwork. An added bonus with this practice is that creating a habit of reframing also forces athletes to take more responsibility in their lives and honestly assess their individual actions. This is one of the most potent qualities of a leader. Thomas J. Watson said it best, “Nothing so conclusively proves a person's ability to lead others as what they do from day to day to lead themselves”.
Create A Vision:
There are different names that people use for this concept, and yet, I like to call this a “WHY”. Developing the habit of creating answers for why they are doing something will teach your athletes to build lighthouses on their journeys. This will work to push them through challenges and failures that they might experience along the way. One example I love using is the origin story of the actor Sylvester Stallone. When he first made his way to Los Angeles, Sylvester Stallone was so painfully poor that he had to spend three weeks sleeping at the train station while he looked for work. It would have been perfectly understandable (and probably encouraged) for him to throw in the towel and move back home. However, the thing that kept him in LA through all the hardships and all the struggles was his vision: To Do Whatever It Takes to Become a Successful Actor. Having a clear vision and knowing, without a doubt, exactly why you are doing something can be a game changer in a young athlete’s journey.
LAUGH:
Humor is a natural stress reliever. People working in one of the most stressful industries in the world, the medical industry, have been noted for using humor as a means for de-stressing and coping with emotionally demanding work days on a regular basis. Being able to laugh after a loss, for example, can help to start the process of reframing our brains so that it is easier to move past dwelling on the failure and moving towards improvement. Personally, there have been plenty of days where I'm playing pickup games and I’M JUST HORRIBLE! But then on the drive home, I’ll turn on a funny podcast or I’ll see a funny video on Facebook, and I will physically feel the changes happening in my body. My neck and shoulders will loosen, my eyebrows will unfurrow, and I take that deep breath and when I let it out my entire body relaxes. That is when it is the easiest for me to really start reframing my performance.
These are just a few things to think about. The process for dealing with failure will be different for all athletes, but the key is to start troubleshooting early in order to lock down the one that best works for them. As they get older and there are more variables to deal with, it will provide a sturdy foundation to which they can always go back to refocus and add an internal boost in motivation.
