FAILURE AN IMPORTANT PART OF SUCCESS AND GROWTH

Yesterday in our day camp for younger kids, I gave a mini-clinic on dribbling. I went over all the fundamentals of dribbling and had one of our alumni Quianna Chaney demonstrating some drills. I told the campers that as coaches, when we are drilling our players, one of our goals to stretch them to the point of making a mistake. We can do this by asking for me speed, adding difficulty to the execution, or in some of our drills, adding a second basketball. I had Q going through some 2 ball dribbling exercises and pushed her to the point of making a mistake and then looked at the campers and told them that was a good thing. I could that at first they didn't understand. There are college players that don't understand that failure is a part of success. That pushing themselves to the point of making a mistake is the only way they can improve their game.

It was ironic that my discussion with the campers was yesterday and that today I received my email newsletter from Darren Hardy, the publisher of Success Magainze. I say ironic because here is a little of what he discussed in the newsletter:

My dad taught me to snow ski when I was 6 years old. By the time I was 8, I was skiing on my own. At the end of a full ski day, I eagerly announced, “Dad, I didn’t fall once all day!” My dad replied, “If you didn’t fall, you didn’t get any better.” What? This was the opposite response I was expecting and hoping for. The bewildered look on my face compelled him to elaborate, “If you are going to get better, you have to push yourself. If you push yourself, you are going to fall.”

My dad was a former university football coach, so we had a full Olympic standard weight set in our garage. On the wall he had painted, “No Pain, No Gain.” To build bigger muscles, you have to inflict pain on them, literally tearing down the fibers of the muscles and bringing them to the point of failure. That’s actually the goal. Then in recovery, the fibers will rebuild bigger and stronger than they were before. Building a muscle is a lot like the process of building success in life.

I owe much of the success I have been able to achieve to my dad and this philosophy. My dad taught me it was not only OK to fail, but it was proof you were improving. I never saw setbacks, obstacles, rejection or even pain as things to avoid; rather, they were markers on the journey toward greatness and should be appreciated, even celebrated.