It doesn’t matter what age we are, young or old; we will face failure. Like I have said before no successful person has become successful without failing. I am sure many of you have heard the quote, “fail your way to success”. Although, we need to not only fail our way to success, but fail and learn, fail and learn. If we do not fail and learn we won’t make it to success.
In the Wolfpack book again I was reminded that we have three choices when we fail. Blame, shame, or claim. As a parent I try to teach my children almost on a weekly basis to not choose blame. Yes, it is easy to make that choice. It’s easy for my children to put the blame on a teacher, put the blame on each other, put the blame on a coach, or put the blame on a teammate. As adults we may put the blame on our parents, our significant other, or our employer/employees/coworkers.
After failure we might choose shame. Maybe we give up and quit after our failure. Maybe we break down from the failure and cry. Maybe we do recover from our failure, but it takes too much time. I am not saying that you can’t have feelings about your failure. It’s important to express your feelings too, but don’t shame yourself. Don’t let the shame hold you back. When the kids and I were all home because of virtual learning I sometimes listened in on my kids’ meets or zooms. My son is in band and they were broken into small groups for zooms. He often was the only one in his small group, so it was like he was playing solos all the time. Now my son strives for perfection in certain areas. If he would mess up, his band teacher told him it took him 8-9 measures to recover. He would be upset with himself and disappointed because of his mistake. He would continue to play but not correctly. His teacher often talked to him about mental endurance. He does have a quicker recovery time now.
This leads me to the choice to claim failure. Know you will failure, but be strong enough to claim it. Once you claim the failure you can fix the problem/issue, and then keep trying. For example, when my son is playing basketball and he turns the ball over instead of blaming or shaming he can bust his butt to get the ball back. He can admit it was his mistake and then go after it. Another example is in my house I do not like the word “sorry”. When my kids were younger they often would say sorry but keep doing the same action. Sorry began to not have any meaning. They now know they should say, “I messed up” and then tell my husband or I how they are going to fix it. They are claiming it.
There is something to learn from every failure. However, the choice is yours on whether you will gain knowledge or not. As the author, Abby Wambach, states, “The world needs us to take risks, fail big, and insist on our right to stick around and try again. And again. A champion never allows a short-term failure to take them out of the long-term game. If you don’t give up, you can never lose. Failure means you are IN the game. Transform failure into your fuel.”