December 23, 2011

“I've learned that failure precedes success, and the right decisions are extension of the wrong ones.”

-Alex Spano, NFL Owner, San Diego Chargers

Failure sucks. It hurts and it feels so final. It’s natural to want to avoid mistakes. No one consciously seeks to make wrong decisions. Becoming fearful about making mistakes can become a big problem for an athlete. That fear can lead him or her to not making any decisions. How may times have you seen someone hesitating about making the choice and paying a heavy price? One of the best examples I can think of is a quarterback fading back to pass and hesitating and then getting sacked. Knowing that a decision needs to be made doesn't make the choices any fewer or easier to make but a choice must be made.  You may disagree. However, not making a choice is also a choice. It's called paralysis by analysis. I know I've dealt with this particular problem over the years. Chances are you have too. We have to remember that are human and as humans we’re bound to make mistakes. Some are large and some are small.  It's inevitable. Accept it. But just as small successes often lead to larger successes, small failures and even the not so small ones can also lead to victory.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a personal change technology that I use a lot with athletes. One of the things that it teaches its practitioners is that failure can be looked at simply as feedback.  Coming in fourth in an Olympic event is feedback. Getting knocked out is feedback. Getting beaten in straight sets is feedback. No setback in sports or in life ever need be final. There's something that can be learned, there's feedback that can be analyzed. Once that information is studied, a new approach or new set of tactics can be devised and that can lead to a big victory. I tell my clients that one of the best things that you can do is to learn that there are no bad decisions. After the fact we have hindsight and it becomes so obvious that we’ve made a mistake. But you have to remember that everyone, including you and me, is making the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. As we grow in maturity and gain experience, the quality of our choices improves. Second-guessing ourselves really doesn't help. Gen. Colin Powell was quoted as saying that in business and battle more money is wasted and more lives are lost from making no decision rather than making the wrong decision. Sometimes it'll feel like a numbers game when you understand that the more mistakes you make the more right decisions you can potentially make.

We are all going to define failure differently. Maybe for you it's coming in second place, being forced to tap out in the match, or being cut from the team. For others it might be failing a course, divorce or getting fired from a job.  Although it feels like it, none of these things are the end of the world. Your so-called failure is never final. You will make other better, informed decisions in the future. Maybe you’ll decide to hire a strength and conditioning coach, get a consultation from nutritionist, watch more game footage or start practicing self-hypnosis. There's always a way out or a way back.   The most successful people, whether in sports or in business have made some very poor choices.  Who was the genius that dreamt up New Coke?  How many millions that the Coca Cola company lose because of that decision?  The key to quick recovery involves two steps: 1) stop looking at those situations as failures and 2) quickly make a new and better choice. Reactions such as embarrassment, anger and frustration are normal but the champions are able to turn those into more productive emotions and remember the decisions they made the helped put them in the winners circle.