You’re going to lose some, and you’re going to win some. You may feel like it’s all your fault when you lose and you deserve all the glory when you win, but the whole truth is, that’s only half true. There’s usually plenty of blame and credit to go around in both scenarios. Learning that will make you a better sport, help you succeed more often, and help you deal with failure when it happens.
It’s easy to believe you fail or succeed on your own merits, all the time. In reality, the difference between the two might be something that has nothing to do with you and could be completely out of your control. No matter how hard you try, you’re going to lose when you deserve to win. Aaaaand you’ll sometimes win when you deserve to lose.
How can that be? In almost any situation where you can succeed or fail, at work, in school, in sports, you are mostly in control. Mostly. You control you. You control your effort, your preparation, and your mindset. You control how you react to setbacks, your strategy, and the choices you make. These are big parts of success and failure.
But.
You know what you don’t control? Your teammates, your project partners, your competition, the weather, how the ball bounces, how the cookie crumbles, and a whole big ass pile of stuff we’ll call luck. (Good and bad.)
As much as your actions matter, all the things you can’t control also matter. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. And that’s the pitfall of focusing too much on outcomes; sometimes you get what you don’t deserve. When you succeed even though you shouldn’t, you might think you can repeat what you did and succeed again. And when you fail even though you did enough to succeed, you might think you’re not good enough to ever win.
Let’s say you’re on a par three and hit your tee shot into the woods, it bounces off a tree and goes in the hole. That’s a barky hole-in-one, which you should definitely celebrate with a round of drinks. Better lucky than good, right? The smart golfer realizes that their ace was less a result of their golf swing, and more a result of dumb luck. The smarter golfer works to fix whatever in their swing had them hit it into the woods in the first place.
When I was in high school, some classes were hard, and some classes were easy. This led me to believe I was smarter than I am, because I didn’t have to study hard in all my classes to get decent grades. When I got to college, I put in the same level of effort that had earned me A’s and B’s in high school. That earned me C’s, D’s, and after I got a 1.75 my second semester, a reminder from your grandparents that they were only paying for 4 years of college. I was not as smart as I thought I was.
So, how do you avoid that same trap? First, you need to look deeper than just wins and losses, successes and failures. How did you perform? Were you prepared, or did you depend on someone else to save your ass? If you were prepared and did your best, how did the rest of your team show up? How was the competition, and where can you improve? This brings me to the growth mindset.
Carol Dweck is a psychologist at Stanford University. In “How Praise Became a Consolation Prize,” Christine Gross-Loh interviewed her about her theories and how they’ve recently been misunderstood and misapplied. “As a young researcher, Dweck was fascinated by how some children faced challenges and failures with aplomb while others shrunk back. Dweck...eventually identified two core mindsets, or beliefs, about one’s own traits that shape how people approach challenges: “fixed mindset,” the belief that one’s abilities were carved in stone and predetermined at birth, and “growth mindset,” the belief that one’s skills and qualities could be cultivated through effort and perseverance.”
Personally, I love the idea of maintaining a growth mindset throughout life, and always being open to learning new things or expanding my skills. Problem is, the spread of Dweck’s idea through schools and business circles has led many to praise effort over outcomes, so much so that they’ve created what Dweck dubbed a “false growth mindset,” a misunderstanding of the idea’s core message.
“Growth mindset’s popularity was leading some educators to believe that it was simpler than it was, that it was only about putting forth effort or that a teacher could foster growth mindset merely by telling kids to try hard. A teacher might applaud a child for making an effort on a science test even if he’d failed it, for instance, believing that doing so would promote growth mindset in that student regardless of the outcome. But such empty praise can exacerbate some of the very problems that growth mindset is intended to counter.”
Her point is that parents who use failure as a learning opportunity can help foster the growth mindset, while parents who react to failures as something negative to be avoided are actually fostering a fixed mindset.
And my point is that you can learn from failure and success. But, the only way to do so is to evaluate your successes with some objectivity. Listen to your coaches, teachers, and bosses when they tell you that they think you can do better. Seek out opportunities to improve, even if you’re only competing against yourself. Give the best you can, all the time.
Even after all that, you have to realize that sometimes, even when you do your best, it won’t be good enough. As a Creative Director used to say to me, “They can’t all be home runs.” That takes strength and self-assurance to believe; the easier path is to quit. Instead, when you hit a pop-up to right field, leg it out to first and hope the outfielder drops the ball. And if he doesn’t, dust yourself off and try again.
Yes, yes, you say, while nodding your head. If only it were so easy. What I’m telling you sounds hard, and is actually way harder than it sounds. The good news here is that you’ll have your Mom and me to help you along and remind you as you grow.
But someday, you’ll have to remind yourself. So, here’s a quote from Tim Duncan’s mom that he shared at his hall of fame induction speech. “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.”
I love you,
Dad
I originally planned to finish this series in twelve months, intending to write one entry a week for 52 weeks. But, other things came up and I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would. We moved, you started a new school, I had other projects, etc. But finally, I’m starting my last entry in September, nine months after I’d planned. Which is the perfect intro to this one.
Time is funny like that. It marches on like a metronome, indifferent to how much you wish it would slow down or speed up. It offers no do-overs, no matter how frivolously you spend it. And it gives zero fucks what you planned to accomplish in the time you had. Once that time is over, you’ll get no more. But, it also stretches out ahead of you into an unknown future, offering untold possibility and infinite choices.
Which is why I hope you both learn to make choices about how you spend your time and understand what those choices mean. Because while there’s never enough time for everything, there’s still enough time to do almost anything.