In today’s world we are obsessed with winning; we love to celebrate success: parades for world champions, news interviews for medalists, top stories on award winners - the list goes on and on. Turn on the news or ESPN and you will find highlights of the game-winning shot, the Top 10 of yesterday’s successes, an interview with the winning team. We love to see and feel victory. We see it over and over again and we get used to that picture of success. We start to simplify it, normalize it, even expect it. But we consistently fail to acknowledge that success is only the smallest part of a bigger, better story.
As an athlete I lived a different reality. My career was not built on successes, but rather on failures. Of course I had some successes throughout my career: national championships, conference championships, Pan American championships, international tournament medals - but I see those as a direct result of my failures. I want to focus on failure as the story because we do not do it enough. Moments of failure are the building blocks to a successful person’s story.
Winston Churchill said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” It likely isn’t coincidence that he uses “failure” twice and “success” only once in that statement. That is typically the reality of the story that is never told. Failing over and over again and learning how to fail with a winner’s mindset is what separates successful people from unsuccessful people. That, and their bravery to continue to expose themselves to the possibility of failure.
Athlete’s have no choice in this matter, it is inherent within our world. If they want to compete, they have to participate in the game where there are two potential outcomes: winning or losing. But either outcome can produce successes or failures, it just depends on their process of analyzing their performance. Analyze to understand the outcome and make changes before their next competition, aka the next opportunity. For athletes it is a constant cycle of performance, analysis, adaptation, and growth. Winning or losing is an outcome within that cycle that only exists to help us make changes to our game. What skill(s) worked? What skill or emotion failed me? Where did I succeed? Where do I need to focus? What is my greatest strength? What is my greatest weakness? What can I fix in the short term that will have the greatest impact?
In life there is no inherent necessity to expose yourself to failure. Therefore, you have to create that necessity. You have to seek out opportunities for failure. You have to make yourself uncomfortable, allow yourself to be vulnerable to fail so that you can learn and grow. If we constantly stay in a comfortable state where we know we will win we lose the opportunity to learn about ourselves - our strengths, our weaknesses, our abilities, our capabilities, ultimately we learn our potential. And when we know our potential, can analyze our performance, and are willing to put in the work to make positive changes we give ourselves the gift of growth.
I retired from my athletic career in 2016 and for the last 6 years I have been trying to put these words into action. It was easy for me to live a comfortable life where I go to work, work hard at my job, and hit the gym on the way home to try to stay in some type of shape. It took me a few short years to realize that something was missing in that routine. I needed to challenge myself - I needed to know that I was growing as a person. I felt that I was lacking an exposure to failure and as an adult (a non-athlete adult!) the fear of failure is a real thing because, again, there is no inherent necessity for it in life. “Be comfortable being uncomfortable”, a common phrase said to me by our team’s sports psychologist that takes on a whole new meaning when it is outside of the field hockey pitch.
So in an effort to live by these words I share with you the opportunities I have given myself to fail in the last few years: learning to box, the Crossfit phenomena, going after a scuba diving certification, learning to lap swim in a pool (if you only knew!), keynote speaking, coaching, road cycling, Olympic lifting. Each one of these activities has taught me something about myself through fear, triumph, being humbled, feeling anxious, feeling proud, feeling silly, and feeling inadequate. Whether the outcome is winning or losing I commit to my own growth as a person.
Nothing is promised with growth except higher self-awareness and a strong commitment to the process. Put the right processes in place, expose yourself to failure, and see if you can make failure a bigger part of your success story. I challenge you with this: dare to fail as the path that can challenge you in the way needed for you to succeed.
Authored By: Lauren Crandall Liska, Director
