Go Out There and Suck

My daughter and I both played soccer this week. Lionel Messi we are not, but we both play hard. I came home happy and she came home quite upset. Granted I’ll give the 8 year old girl more leeway to be reduced to tears than the 35 year old man, but I liked my night more than hers. It’s not very

often I can control the ball for more than 5 seconds at a time. My job on the team is to run around the field and keep people laughing. But by some stroke of luck I managed a few charges downfield and 3 or 4 good shots on target. I got ice cream after the game and thot I was king of the pitch.

Hope, in a mindless moment, forgot that she was playing defense this game instead of goalie and picked up the ball in the box giving the other team a penalty.  As you can imagine, not everyone her team was super pleased with her manoeuver. Driving home from the game she declared that it was the worst day of her life. Truthfully we both had high points and low points in our games, but it struck me how hard she took her failure.

If we expect that we will never fail, WHEN we do fail we are distraught.

If we anticipate failure, continual recalibration positioning us for growth, then failure doesn’t seem so bad. Every one of us will face situations today that will give us opportunities to fail or succeed. What strikes me a student of human behaviour is that it’s not the failure or success that often determines an individual’s mood… it’s our posture of expectation.

If we expect to always succeed, thinking we should always perform at a high level, then we never truly enjoy anything. Successes are simply what we expected. We lose the joy, and instead it’s replaced with  the feeling of “well of course I did.” Heaven forbid if we fail. Failure makes us question our abilities, our preparation and maybe even who we are.

If we expect that at times we may fail, success becomes fun. It’s an accomplishment. If we do fail, we can chalk it up to just one of those times when things didn’t work out. What can I learn? How can I make it different next time. At very worst it’s an “oh well” moment rather than an “oh crap” moment.

May I never become so proud to consider myself unworthy of failure. Some of the greatest accomplishments in life were a result of multiple failures, on a journey to success.

Plus it’s more fun.

So go out there and suck.

Or do well.

Either way, keep a smile on your face.