Failing As Part of Excellence

More than twenty-five years after beginning my time as a performance psychologist, I have noticed a few things, some of them have even been useful.

I would ask you to look around the people that you know who are truly excellent at something, sport, business, the performing arts, the military, law it does not really matter.

They might look as though they have got there with ease, as what they now do, they can indeed make look easy.

If the people you are looking at share anything with the people, I have had the pleasure to work with, that sense the route to excellence is easy could not be further from the truth.

In fact, what I have noticed is that the ones who are truly excellent at what they do, almost without exception have had something major go catastrophically wrong during their careers. Be that a significant injury, the failure of a business, a significant illness or even death of a loved one.

For many of us, that would have been where the journey ended, for those who have gone onto to be world class in what they do, it has been a part of their lives.

Thinking about this it makes absolute sense, in that if you are prepared to be in something long enough to become excellent, then do you really expect that to happen without something going seriously wrong at some point.

Getting past those massive life events is part of the game.

It may be at this point that you really need a team with you, or you find out who your team really is. They may not be the people you thought would be there with you. That’s actually ok, if they are not there with you when it goes wrong, why would you want to take them with you when things are going right for you. 

Many of the young clients I have worked with, are talented in multiple areas, failing at something is not part of the story, but learning that it probably is and getting over those upsets, and failures can be one of the most useful (and least wanted) phases of a life.