Sports Lessons For Life

 Try This At Home……………..

Next time your child fails at achieving her goal, have her make a list of everything that she did well and a list of all the things that did not go well.  Then have her analyze the second list and come up with ways to fix or improve upon them.   Once those things are fixed, have her try again.

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We’ve all failed to accomplish a goal at one time or another.  It’s normal to feel lousy when it happens, but the more productive response would be to figure out why it happened.  Cavett Robert said, “Life is a grindstone, and whether it grinds you down or polishes you up, is for you and you alone to decide.”  You can let your failures control and define you, or you can learn from them and use them to your advantage.  The choice is yours.

Fear of failure was the thing that I struggled most with during my cycling career.  I was so afraid of not being perfect that I would agonize over the possibility of failure.  Like everything in life, the thing that you dwell on is what comes to be, and left unchecked my fear became a self fulfilling prophesy.  Fear of failure is a separate post all to itself, but I mention it because in learning to deal with my fear, I learned an important lesson about failure…….While failure is unpleasant, it doesn’t make you a failure and it isn’t the end of the world.  It’s simply a step toward becoming successful.  You won’t find a successful person out there who hasn’t failed a few times in the process. 
                                                           
We all want to protect our kids and hate to see them fail, but as I’ve said over and over again in my blog posts, your child will learn far more from failing than they will from success.  Sure, failure isn’t any fun, but it can teach a valuable lesson. 

                                                                                    Reasons Why We Fail

We Went About It Wrong

Most likely the reason your child failed is because she went about it the wrong way.  This is the most valuable lesson in failing.  If she can realize where she went wrong and fix it, then the next time she’ll be successful. Help her analyze the situation and figure how she can improve.  

Lack of Motivation/ Follow Through

If your child seems unmotivated to do what is necessary to accomplish her goal, then it might be time for her to access if the goal is still important to her.  Sometimes priorities change.  My husband quit his wrestling career in the middle of a tournament.  In the middle of a match, he decided it just wasn’t fun anymore.

The other option may be that she just doesn’t want to put in the work.  She wants the reward that comes with accomplishing her goal, but she isn’t willing to do what it takes to get there.  In the end if she fails at her goal because of her work ethic then she’ll learn an important life lesson.  Letting her learn this lesson the hard way, while she is young, is the best gift you can give her.

Lack of focus

Your child may fail to accomplish her goals, because she isn’t focused enough at the task at hand.  She needs to choose which goal is most important and give that the most attention.  She may not know how to focus.  Focusing is a learned thing and is something that is crucial to success in all aspects of life.  Check out my previous prioritization blog for tips on teaching your child to prioritize and stay tuned in a few weeks for my post on the art of focusing. 

Unrealistic Expectations

Your child’s goals may be unrealistic.  If she fails to meet her goal it’s a great opportunity for her to be completely honest about why it happened.  She may have inadvertently set herself up for failure by setting an unrealistic goal.  Help her learn to set realistic goals.  This doesn’t mean that she can’t dream big, it just means she has to be realistic about things like her timetable, talents, abilities, etc.  Some goals take a long time to reach, and some people are better suited at achieving some goals than others.  

If she has failed to reach her goal the first thing she should look at is her timetable.  Maybe her goal would be more achievable if she gave herself more time.  She may also need to add in some additional sub-goals.  Maybe her plan is missing a few steps.

The harder thing for her to do will be to access her abilities. She may find her talents lend themselves better to a new and different goal. She may find she has more to lose by continuing her pursuit than she does by throwing in the towel.  The choice is never an easy one, but this too is an important lesson to learn. 

Part of learning to set goals, is learning what to do when it doesn’t work out.  It is an important skill set for your child to develop.  Learning from their failure will make them successful.

For more information on myself or my children’s books please visit www.erinmirabella.com  My book, Gracie Goat’s Big Bike Race, is an excellent way to talk about overcoming fears with your child.

Tags: Children's books, Confidence, doing their best, Erin's bio, honesty, learning, motivation, Overcoming fears, practice, Prioritization, strengths, try this at home, weaknesses, winning

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 10:38 am and is filed under Goal Setting, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.