Dealing With Adversity? Learn To Throw Away Your Failure!

My daughter Katie was quite the soccer player back in the day. I hold fond memories of her high school days on the pitch.

Every player brings her own strengths. One of Katie’s (many) strengths was her head for the game. She played a better, tougher mental game then anyone on the field.

Late in one of her high school matches she found herself defending one-on-one with an opposing player. She was the last line of defense between that ball handler and her own goal.

The offensive player jerked right, then cut left. Katie lunged at air. It was a beautifully executed fake, and Katie got burned. The goalie had no chance on stopping that shot.

It’s a horrible feeling, getting burned. It gets inside your head quickly, and just as quickly it descends to a discomfort in your gut. You feel like the whole world just saw your mistake, as if the fifty people on the sidelines were actually 50,000.

And, if you’re not extremely careful, you feel your confidence sink like a bowling ball in quicksand.

Confidence. That elusive state that every top performer must cling to as if for life itself.

That explains what Katie did next. As she was jogging back to her position for the ensuing kick-off she reached into the air in front of her, extended her right arm, and closed her hand around something invisible. Just as quickly she threw that invisible object off to her side and got back in the game.

This was Katie’s ritual to deal with adversity on the soccer field. Grab the failure and throw it away. The time for learning will still be there, but this is not the time to think about it.

That moment of failure is gone. It’s over. There’s a new moment in front of you, full of promise and of expectation of great things.

Carry the past defeat into the future opportunity and you’ll find self-doubt doing a dance on your head.

What is your ritual? What is your “throw-it-away” habit?

It’s tough out there. And it makes it tough to stay tough. Rejection. Rude people. The one that got away. Your own private angel-devil battle.

Failure is a certainty. How you respond is up to you.

Learn how to shrug it off.

Learn how to throw it away.


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About the Author: Jeff Shore

Jeff Shore is the Founder and CEO of Shore Consulting, Inc. a company specializing in psychology-based sales training programs. Using these modern, game-changing techniques, Jeff Shore’s clients delivered over 145,000 new homes generating $54 billion in revenue last year.