The Importance of Learning to Fail

     In last week's Flat Tire Ministries Thought we looked at the whole idea of taking and accepting responsibility for the outcomes in athletics and effectually in life. Far too many people spend their condolences from a loss attempting to place the blame on someone else for the loss rather than look for the opportunity to grow from the experience, which ultimately should be our goal for our children, athletes, students, and ourselves.
     Why is it that we are always looking for someone else to blame when it comes to personal defeat? Why do we seek to blame the referee for the loss due to his or her bad calls? Why do we console our children with ideas like the only reason you got beat is because the other team cheated? My studies, and my own experiences have led me to the belief that as a society we do not want our children to experience defeat. We want everything in life to be in their favor. We want everyone to get a trophy for participating. Today's FTM stresses the point that not everyone gets a trophy in life and the lessons we learn from our failures are critical stepping stones to becoming men and women of character.
     Being a coach is so much more than trying to go undefeated and winning championships. I was reminded of this fact earlier this week when a former student/athlete of mine posted a comment about something I used to tell our wrestlers in practice. In regards to winning championships I would always tell the kids that "if we take care of business, business will take care of itself." Well my application of this life lesson in my coaching stuck around in Cody's mind because now almost 20 years later, Cody is applying that lesson we learned in wrestling to his own personal business experience as he reminds himself each day the importance of doing things the right way and getting back up on your feet when you fall down. That is the purpose of athletics, to teach life lessons that will turn young men and women into great leaders, business owners, parents, and spouses, not to tell everyone on my team how great they are and how they should never get beat unless someone cheats them out of it!
      I often use an analogy of a baby learning to walk to the efforts of an athlete to learn a new skill or move in my coaching. You see a baby doesn't stand to her feet and take off across the room the first time an attempt to walk is made. Instead each time she stands up and plops down on her Pampered bottom, she gets back up and equipped with a little more knowledge about why that didn't work and educated a little more about what needs to be done differently to avoid that same plop, she takes a couple more steps towards the apple of her eye on the coffee table across the way. That's how we learn. Or maybe I should say that is how we should want our children, students, and athletes to learn. If every time we fall down or fail to win a competition, or we aren't successful in attempting a move or a specific technique we give up and quit or even worse make excuses and remove ourselves from the equation we lose, we fail, and we are defeated.
     Think about it, the lesson is in the loss. We teach our students in school, they practice what we teach them, some level of success should be reached, but perfection is not the goal because we are still learning, we reteach and practice some more, we apply it to real life situations, and then we eventually assess the lesson learned to see if we learned anything along the way. Well if you are a parent that believes your child should never bring home anything but straight "A's" on their grade card you may want to rethink that, because they may need to be challenged more to stretch their minds to it's fullest capacity. And the same holds true in athletics, if you win every time you compete you probably need to play some tougher competition.
     What you have to understand is that we learn from our mistakes in life. Believe me when I tell you I have gained an additional degree in learning from my mistakes in life. The author of the Book of James in the Bible explained it like this in James 1:2-3 Count it all joy when you face trials, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance. We have to teach our children that it isn't the gold medal that we want them to win, it's the effort it takes to win the gold medal that will see them down the road when life presents them with challenges and trials of all kinds. We have to teach them to get back up when they get knocked down. We have to teach them that if you really want that trophy, you're going to have to work really hard to get it, not just show up. Just as Paul taught the Christians in Corinth you have to train to win the race regardless of whether you win every race every time. The training you are doing is so that when it is your time to shine you will be ready to go for it! That's my paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.
     You have to start somewhere. We don't want to beat down the confidence of our children, students, or athletes but we don't need to build them up to a place where they can't see the benefits of learning from a loss either. Instill perseverance because it builds character as Romans 5:3-5 points out, We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment.
The lesson is in the struggle not always in the victory! Enjoy your week and do something amazing!
Coach Carter