Failure is an unstoppable force. When you make a mistake or fall short, your failures tend to hang over your head and bear down on you. But if you allow your failure to do this, it puts a limit on how successful you can be. These self-imposed limits can keep you from ever achieving your goals. So how do we keep our past failures from holding us back?
If we allow ourselves to dwell on our mistakes, we can get bogged down and consider victory impossible. We begin to beat ourselves up and discount our own abilities. Sure, there is always a time to reflect on our mistakes, but that should not be all the time. We have to rise above our failures. We have to immediately focus on the next task at hand.
Coach Epps interrupted my thoughts. “Think about that later,” he said. “Right now you’ve got to focus on your next opponent. Let’s go win this one.”
Where I have experienced this the most is in competition. The pain and humiliation of defeat can be crushing, especially when there are many people expecting you to succeed. There have been many times I have allowed my loss to keep me down. But one thing that Coach Epps told me right after a loss stuck with me for years. Right after walking off the mat, my mind was stuck on the mistakes I had made during the match, I kept talking about the things I did wrong, or could have done better. But Coach Epps interrupted my thoughts. “Think about that later,” he said. “Right now you’ve got to focus on your next opponent. Let’s go win this one.”
Failure is an unstoppable force, but it it up to us how we use it.
This really hit home for me. Why do I need to waste the time and energy sitting around and licking my wounds? Why focus on weakness rather than strength? I needed to get ahead of my failure, and use it to push me forward into victory. Failure is an unstoppable force, but it it up to us how we use it. Are you allowing your failure to get in the way? Or are you using it to reach new heights?
See you on the mat!
Coach Monkey
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