Let’s talk about failure.
How you deal with failure?
As of my writing this, the Olympics are in full sway. I don’t have any preconceptions that this would ever find its way to Mikaela Shiffrin, but I hope she’s doing all right inside of the challenges she’s facing at the Olympic Games. You see, I’ve read several articles about her failures inside of the Skiing World going on over in China. She’s having a hard time. In fact, the entire world is watching that challenge. But there’s powerful concepts that we can draw from what’s happening with her, and what happens in your life as well, when it comes to facing failure.
I want to give you some energizing resources that you can use when dealing with failures in your life. I’m using just one of the articles out of several I have read that shared the same quotations. Mikaela Shiffrin has just had her her second consecutive failure inside of the slalom races. To put in perspective, she’s a she’s a gold medalist. She’s at the top of her game and yet dealing with failure like never before. One of the quotations in the article says, “It makes me second-guess the last 15 years, everything I thought I knew about my own skiing and slalom and racing mentality. Just processing a lot for sure.”
Wow.
Makes you second guess the entire 15 years?
Have you ever been in a moment where a failure just seems to be so large in your life that you wonder if everything you did up to that point was useless? Let’s push back on that for just a second. I understand that she’s just reacting right in the news moment here. But we can drop in a powerful teaching from Napoleon Hill here. Said Hill, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” There’s absolutely a time to process what’s been going on in the failure. But it doesn’t make the last 15 years a waste by any means. To go back, to second guess, the work and the process, reveals there is something inside Mikaela Shffrin that she needs to dive into. It’s not the work aspect. It’s it’s not everything that she knew about skiing and slalom.
Isn’t it fascinating to hear the processing that occurs in the moment of the actual failure?
As is regularly the case with sports, Olympic athletes get that microphone in your face immediately upon success or failure. You just have to process everything in the moment. That’s part of the the job that comes with that success or failure inside of the sports. But it’s fascinating to see that the initial reaction there is, “it makes me second guess everything.”
First, consider this: You are not your successes, and, let us all thank the universe that you are also not your failures. If you define yourself solely by your successes, you’re going to have a day where a failure like this breaks you. Mikaela is currently staring at failure right now, but to flip this both ways, Michael Phelps dealt with this on the backside of his gold medals. He finished swimming, went into retirement, and he talks very openly about the suicidal challenges that he faced after his incredible successes.
You are not your successes. You are not your failures. Who are you?
Have you have you ever considered defining yourself outside of your successes and outside of your failures? Keep reading. There’s more to that in a second.
In the second quotation that jumped out to me from this article she says, “I’ll try to reset again, and maybe try to reset better this time. But I also don’t know how to do it better because I’ve never been in this position before and I don’t know how to handle it….if I’m going to ski out on the fifth gate, what’s the point?”
What’s the point?
Have you ever had that moment inside of a failure where something happens and you just wonder, “What’s the point of trying?” Or “Why did I even spend my time doing that?” There’s a massive loss of insight there. Instead, consider what you have become through the process. What have you become through the practice, the time, the discipline, who is that person?
In fact, this article talks about about her mindset in December before the games begin. She says inside of there, “I could walk away from the games without any metals and still feel like they were successful if I know I’ve raced my best.” Clearly she’s dealing with this gap between what she believes is her best and the failure that’s currently facing her. She doesn’t see what she has just done as her best efforts.
These comments have soaked in my mind the past couple of days. I don’t claim to have a solution for what Mikaela needs to go and do. I also don’t want to make assumptions that I experience the same failures anyone else experiences. We all have our taxing moments in life.
As such, I do have a solution for how I handle things when I deal with epic failures. I have a place that I go to in these moments to help me reflect and recenter. I want to share that with you today.
The ideas come from of one of my favorite books titled The Majesty of Calmness by William George Jordan. It’s an interesting book because it talks about today’s challenges, only it was written almost 150 years ago. Inside of it are some steps that we could pull out and use when we’re dealing with the epic failures of our lives.
This comes right out of the first chapter: “When the worries and cares of the day fret you, and begin to wear upon you, and you chafe under the friction,–be calm.” Let’s translate that into today’s lingo: when you’re down and out, and you’re feeling out of it. What do we do about this? He says, Be calm. What a simple statement that’s so difficult for us to do in those moments of epic failures in our lives. Hold on. He explains how to be calm. He says, “Stop, rest for a moment…”
There are great benefits to stopping and resting. For this article, I’ll call it meditation. Benefits come in as short as 60 seconds when you stop and rest. Focus on your breathing. Focus on your heartbeat. I’m going to warn you right now that your mind won’t let you do that very easily. It’s going to be processing and racing and telling you you don’t have 60 seconds because you are failing!
Let me help you out: You have 60 seconds! Stop and rest for a moment.
The second half of that sentence says, “…let calmness and peace assert themselves.” This is the second key. But you’re in the middle of an epic failure… How can you possibly let calmness and peace assert themselves?
First, let’s look at what it means “to assert”. The definition of assert is “to state a fact or belief confidently and forcefully.” How are you going to confidently, in full belief, push out this idea that you can be calm and peaceful? That sounds completely opposite of what’s possible inside of failure. It reflects back to earlier in this article: terms of your own identity. If you can pull yourself out of the failures. And in fact, if you can pull yourself out of the successes, and realize in those moments, that you’re not the failure, then it opens the opportunity for you to find calmness and peace inside of who you are.
As en example for you, I have something that I lean back onto, that has nothing to do with my successes, or with my failures. And yet, it influences both of those very heavily. I tell myself in those failing moments that, “I am a person of value, who values other people, and adds value to them in their lives.” In my failing moments, when I pause and take 60 seconds, what I am trying to assert inside of my own beliefs is that I am a person of value, I do value other people, and that I am on a mission, a quest to seek to add value to other people. It’s very powerful in those failing moments.
I want to tell you right now, You are a person of value. You are a person of value. You are a person of value.
Onto our third key to pull from failure. William George Jordan writes, “Study the disturbing elements, each by itself, bring all the will power of your nature to bear upon them, and you will find that they will, one by one, melt into nothingness, like vapors fading before the sun.”
What are those things that are nagging at you? What are the thoughts of negativity coming into your mind? What’s your mind telling you about that failure? How are you processing that? Jordan encourages us to identify those disturbing elements. Then gather all the will power that you possess to each item on the list. You are not going to fight these elements collectively. You’re going to go after them one by one. You can do this! You got this! Take every disturbing element out one by one.
You can then watch them “melt into nothingness, like vapors before the sun.” That’s worth it.
Practice this process. It will take time. It will pay off.
Look at the second half of this paragraph by Jordan:
The glow of calmness that will then pervade your mind, the tingling sensation of an inflow of new strength, may be to you the beginning of the revelation of the supreme calmness that is possible for you. Then, in some great hour of your life, when you stand face to face with some awful trial, when the structure of your ambition and life-work crumbles in a moment, you will be brave. You can then fold your arms calmly, look out undismayed and undaunted upon the ashes of your hope, upon the wreck of what you have faithfully built, and with brave heart and unfaltering voice you may say: “So let it be,–I will build again.”
I love that.
“You can then fold your arms calmly look out and dismayed and undaunted upon the ashes of your hope upon the wreck of what you have faithfully built…” It’s pretty harrowing, right? The ashes of your hope, the wreck of what you’ve built these, these questions that Mikaela is asking herself right now: “what is this all been?”, “what am I doing?, “what’s my last 15 years been about?” Remember, Jordan writes, “…with brave heart, and unfaltering voice, you may say: “So let it be, I will build again.”
So comes the majesty of calmness, to the person that’s able to take failure and see it for what it is.
It’s a next step in our journey.
It’s a seed of an equivalent opportunity of success.
I hope that Mikaela has the coaches in her life that help her with mindset. Typically, when you get to that level of competition, you have someone that’s working with your mindset as well. I wish her the best in processing her current situation. I hope you have a coach in your life that helps you identify who you truly are, that sees your infinite potential, and that buys in wholeheartedly to your dreams and success. If you find yourself desiring a coach at that level, get on my calendar and let’s talk.
As you consider these keys remember always: One Step Up Makes All the Difference.