Being in a Position to Fail

You’ve got to be willing to put yourself in a position to fail in order to succeed. And you’ve got to be willing to look at it from the standpoint of “the more times I put myself out there in a position to fail, the more opportunities I’m going to have to win because every time I fail, I want to learn something from it.”

It doesn’t mean you’re not going to learn the same thing several times. But that’s experience. And experience builds confidence.

Regardless of what the mental gurus tell you, you can’t reprogram your brain and all of a sudden have the brain of a hardened competitor that’s fought his way through the gauntlet of fear to figure out what it takes for him to overcome fear when things are going well.

In the beginning, you’ve got to learn to keep it together when things are going bad, but in the end, you’ve got to learn to keep it together when you’re shooting well. Because when you’re shooting well, it’s so easy to get ahead of yourself.

This is an excerpt from the October 2011 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.