I think when I say this to the kids especially; they get very perplexed as to why their coach wants them to fail? Why he wants them not succeed and meet their goals?
But then I explain what I mean…………
As adults, we are so afraid to fail. If every person that came and started training with me over the last nearly 19 years of teaching stayed I would have the biggest club you would imagine, with students having achieved so much over that time it would be too hard to measure.
Problem is, for a lot of people, the first instance something gets hard and we don’t nail it the first time, we often pack it in, dismiss it, and move on to the next so called challenge, but nothing is a challenge if there is not a moment of triumph when we succeed is there after having to persist.
If I quit Martial Arts when I first failed, I would have stopped in High School. Every night I fail at something, even the slightest thing, but it keeps you moving on. I refuse to let this beat me. I’m not doing this for fame or glory. At the end of the day I am proving to myself that I can keep doing this and I am still capable of keeping up. That’s not ego – That’s resilience.
Kids need to know what it is like to fail, and to get back up, dust yourself off, and try again (I think that’s a song?). The better they are at dealing with failure, the better they will be at life in general. WHEN they fail, we pull them aside, do a little assessment, and tell them to have another go, and they know it will be happening. That may not happen straight away, but it will, BUT, we as their parents or mentors need to do the same.
“The Instructor does not tell the student to do anything they have not done before”
A lot of us don’t do this, but we need to practice this. I still have to do it in everyday life, so you do too (just have a chat to my wife or any of my close mates about me and backing a trailer).
To finish…… I’ll tell a quick story about one of the best examples of dealing with failure and rising above it.
My best friend took 3 ATTEMPTS to get his Zen Do Kai Black Belt. The first time he failed was through no fault of his own. The second time he injured himself and could not finish the grading, only to come back a third time and nail it. That guy is now a 7th degree black belt, a very accomplished businessman, and one of the hardest working humans I know. How many of us would have stopped after the first failure.
Sometimes failing is the best thing that can happen to us. Don’t avoid it – Embrace it.
Kyl Reber
#cma4life