Video transcript:
In baseball, you are going to fail. You are going to go 0 and 4 at the plate. There will be times where you don’t get out of a single inning on the mound. You will make errors in the field. And there will be times where you will embarrass yourself. If these things haven’t happened to you, then you probably haven’t played long enough.
Failure and the frequency at which we experience it make baseball one of the toughest sports to play. But at the same time, if we want to put ourselves in the best position for success, and take the game as far as we want to, we have to learn how to handle it and get better because of it. Here’s three ways we can do that.
Number one: Dare to fail. When we shift our mindset from fearing failure to welcoming the possibility of it, we allow our abilities and training to take over, and we perform up to our full capabilities. We become confident decision makers in the box, competitors on the mound, and athletic movers in the field. It puts us in a better position for success. Ask yourself: Am I willing to compete freely even if it means I might fail?
The second thing we can do is learn from failure. Some of the best athletes don’t even believe that failure exists. They just see it as a learning opportunity. However you define failure, just make sure you see it as an opportunity for growth. Just as success leaves clues, failure does too. So the next time you think you’ve failed, ask yourself: What can this teach me? How can I grow from this experience?
Last thing: Understand that you are not your results. Your identity, your value as a human being has nothing to do with our performance on the baseball field. This game is too unstable and too uncertain to be the foundation for who we are as people. Recognize that, while it can be super meaningful to us, it cannot be who we are. It’s something we do. At the end of the day, just know that you will fail. Probably a lot. And it won’t be fun, but you will work through it. Learn from it. Get better because of it.