The following post I wrote was featured on GovX.com as part of a new monthly series. GovX is a company whose goal is to create the ultimate, privileged, e-commerce destination for active duty, reserve and retired members of the U.S. Armed Forces and related government agencies. Steiner Sports is proud to have a relationship with GovX.
The average person has 60,000 thoughts in their head each day. How can you take advantage of this?
You control how and what you think about everything. A lot happens to you on a day-to-day basis. It’s important to recognize that life is not about what happens to you, it’s about what you do with what happens and it’s also about what you want to have happen after.
So, what happens when you fail? How do you respond?
The objective of dealing with failure is not to make believe something never happened, but it’s to recognize that you have made a mistake so you never do it again. Remember that it’s okay to lose as long as you don’t lose the lesson.
First, stop and think about that for a second about how things should play out. What is your approach? What are you doing wrong?
One of the things I always say when I’m coaching basketball is that when you take a bad shot, miss a defensive assignment, or throw an errant pass, you have to stop and breathe for a second. Don’t just throw up another jumper. Think about how you are going to correct what you just did.
Sports and failure are often associated with each other much more often than people think. In basketball you fail usually 50-60% of the time. In baseball, failing 70% of the time is considered a success, an All-Star success, and over a career, a Hall of Fame success. So, here’s an excerpt from a recent Q&A I held with Derek Jeter where I asked him how he responds to failure:
