Besides being an avid but less-than-average hockey player who only learned to skate in my adult years, I was drawn to this article for several reasons. There are a lot terms used today that I am not familiar with, like helicopter parents, millennials (not used in the most flattering way), and others. I am a big proponent of using self-talk very carefully; if you call yourself a failure you will be a failure. If you fail as an engineer, don’t call yourself a failure. There are no failures only results and the results may not always be what you want or what you expect them to be–but learn from the results.
In business, we never look to not succeed in our ventures, but many times that’s what happens. The most successful people in sports, in most cases, don’t succeed as often as they would like to. The best batters in baseball hit in the mid .300 batting average, which means they are unsuccessful over 60% of the time. But they are still considered elite. In hockey, the best players of all time are successful scoring goals on 20% of their shots, which means they fail 80% of the time and yet they are the best.
I don’t advocate that we in business or on our professional career paths should strive not to succeed, but we do need to remember that there are valuable lessons to be learned by falling, so avoiding it may not be the best choice.
Getting back to playing hockey as an adult, if I tried to avoid falling I would have missed one of the most enjoyable activities in my life, which I have been “playing” for over 30 years. I hope you enjoy the read.