Dealing With Failure
As a baseball player, failure is something that I know very well. In order to become successful in this game, I had to learn how to manage losing, failing, and falling short because I have to deal with it on the daily basis, especially during season. We've all heard of the saying that hall of fame baseball players fail 7 out of 10 times. To put that into perspective, a MLB starter receives an average of 500 at bats per season. If that player batted .300 during a season, then he was unsuccessful 350 out of those 500 times. In a sport where you spend most of your time coming up short, how does one stay sane? Well, these are a couple of methods and ideas that help me to soften the blows and come back ready to win, even when it gets hard.
The first idea understand what game you are playing. If you play baseball, you have to know that most of the time you won't get the job done, but at the same time, you live for the wins. I never understood why some players would get upset every time they got out, it's as if they don't know what game they are playing. You must know the game! This helps to remove some of the power that failure has over you.
Second is to have selective or short memory. This is the ability to forget what just happened in your last at bat, and step into the box again with the same confidence that you had. If you want to step it up a notch, learn how to come into this next at bat with even more confidence then the last, knowing that if you just failed, the odds are that you are closer now to having success. The ability to let your losses go just as quick as they come is truly a super power and people who posses this trait can make it very far in this game.
Finally the third is to not get high or low, but to stay hungry. When you find yourself in a slump going 0 for your last 20 ab's, can you still walk into the box like you just hit a homerun in your last AB? The game will be sure to test you and if you can survive the inevitable lows and keep your confidence, the lows won't last very long. Likewise, when your bat is hot and your smoking everything that comes your way, you gotta stick to your process and stay hungry, or else you are simply speeding up the arrival of another low. Like they say, in the game of baseball you're either in a slump, or you are about to enter one.
The game of baseball is a game of self mastery. The players who learn how to navigate failure the most efficiently are the players who are most successful in this game. If you take the time to pay attention to yourself and how you act during the course of a season, you will find unique methods and ideas that will support you and become tools for success. Sometimes you will create an idea or mental system that will only make sense to you, but if it works, that's all that matters. The bottom line is that if you pay attention, the game will teach you.
