Saturday, June 12, 2021
Failures & Disappointments - the Perfect Foundation for Your Ultimate Success Both In and Out of the Pool
Let me state the obvious: Failing is NOT fun. It is not for the faint of heart. Going to your taper meet and coming up short in your best events is beyond disappointing. When you fail, it feels like you just had the wind knocked out of you — you're flooded with negative thinking and self-doubts, resulting in both your self-confidence and motivation taking a major hit.
As a consequence, many swimmers go into their bigger races dreading failure. They worry about the “what if's” happening to them. Should they fail, these same swimmers can mercilessly beat themselves up for their poor performances.
If you have some big dreams for yourself in the pool, if you have a huge, scary goal that you desperately want to achieve, then how you handle your failures and disappointments will determine whether you'll ultimately reach that goal or fall woefully short.
What do I specifically mean by this? Your failures and disappointments in the pool potentially hold the secret to your future successes. My belief is that failure is the perfect steppingstone to your success. What you have to learn to do is to change your current relationship with failure.
Most swimmers hate failing with a passion and therefore will go to great lengths to avoid having to experience the feelings of embarrassment, frustration, low self-esteem, disappointment and self-directed anger that usually accompany a failure. What gets lost whenever you emotionally respond to your setbacks in this way is the opportunity to improve and get faster as a swimmer.
While it's never fun to lose or swim poorly, within a bad swim lies invaluable feedback about what you did wrong, and therefore, what you need to do differently next time. It is this specific feedback that you desperately need in order to improve as an athlete. However, if you tend to put yourself down whenever you fail, if you get really frustrated with and angry at yourself, then you will distract yourself from discovering the important lessons that are almost always present in a disappointing swim. Without this kind of critical feedback from your bad swims, you can never reach your true potential as a swimmer.
As a competitive tennis player, I worked my way up to playing number one singles at a Division I school. The way that I got that good was by losing a ton of matches over my years as a junior player. Like most serious athletes, I hated losing with a passion. However, I figured out a long time ago that within each of these setbacks lay the information that I needed to improve.
Because of this, it's absolutely critical that you learn to not view failure as the enemy and something to be avoided at all costs! Instead, when things “go south” for you in a meet, you want to immediately get curious about what you did that didn't work and what you need to do differently next time. Do NOT use your failures as a club to emotionally beat yourself up!
Keep in mind this invaluable cliché: “Failure is feedback and feedback is the breakfast of champions!”
As a consequence, many swimmers go into their bigger races dreading failure. They worry about the “what if's” happening to them. Should they fail, these same swimmers can mercilessly beat themselves up for their poor performances.
If you have some big dreams for yourself in the pool, if you have a huge, scary goal that you desperately want to achieve, then how you handle your failures and disappointments will determine whether you'll ultimately reach that goal or fall woefully short.
What do I specifically mean by this? Your failures and disappointments in the pool potentially hold the secret to your future successes. My belief is that failure is the perfect steppingstone to your success. What you have to learn to do is to change your current relationship with failure.
Most swimmers hate failing with a passion and therefore will go to great lengths to avoid having to experience the feelings of embarrassment, frustration, low self-esteem, disappointment and self-directed anger that usually accompany a failure. What gets lost whenever you emotionally respond to your setbacks in this way is the opportunity to improve and get faster as a swimmer.
While it's never fun to lose or swim poorly, within a bad swim lies invaluable feedback about what you did wrong, and therefore, what you need to do differently next time. It is this specific feedback that you desperately need in order to improve as an athlete. However, if you tend to put yourself down whenever you fail, if you get really frustrated with and angry at yourself, then you will distract yourself from discovering the important lessons that are almost always present in a disappointing swim. Without this kind of critical feedback from your bad swims, you can never reach your true potential as a swimmer.
As a competitive tennis player, I worked my way up to playing number one singles at a Division I school. The way that I got that good was by losing a ton of matches over my years as a junior player. Like most serious athletes, I hated losing with a passion. However, I figured out a long time ago that within each of these setbacks lay the information that I needed to improve.
Because of this, it's absolutely critical that you learn to not view failure as the enemy and something to be avoided at all costs! Instead, when things “go south” for you in a meet, you want to immediately get curious about what you did that didn't work and what you need to do differently next time. Do NOT use your failures as a club to emotionally beat yourself up!
Keep in mind this invaluable cliché: “Failure is feedback and feedback is the breakfast of champions!”