The first #MondayMotivation social
media post in 2019 by USA Swimming is the inspiration for my first
blog post of 2019. The motivational quote was said by Winston
Churchill. A quick history lesson reminds us that Winston Churchill
was the prime minister of the United Kingdom during World War II. He
is often credited with doing an exceptional job keeping the United
Kingdom resilient through turbulent war times. Churchill once said,
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to
continue that counts.” How can we help our swimmers successfully
deal with success and failure? No single result is the end of the
story. It is more how we react and keep moving forward.
First, how does one handle success? My
answer is to be proud of your accomplishment and the work that led
you to your successful accomplishment. Some level of celebration is
likely appropriate. The next response is the difficult one. Often
some swimmers start to doubt they can replicate (or even improve on)
that accomplishment. They begin to think about all the hard work and
time leading up to the perceived perfect outcome just achieved. It
can be hard to believe it is possible to do it all over again, let
alone be better. Agreed it will not be easy. Maybe in the past the
athlete acknowledged there were still areas to improve and approached
those areas in an honest effort to get better. However, in the end
the athlete did not see the improvement desired. Likely, that
resulted from forgetting about the aspects that they worked on
earlier. The athlete probably got better in the new areas, but the
old stuff may have regressed from a lack of focus on them. This is
understandable and common. It is a large part of what makes
continual improvement so difficult. One must continue to work on the
old stuff while finding new areas of improvement.
Continuing to become better only gets
more difficult as you improve. This is where the courage really is
needed. No athlete can do this alone. Along with one's support
system of coaches, teammates, family, etc. an athlete can be guided
on a new path. This support system will be there for encouragement
along the way. These individuals can help push the athlete beyond
old limits and help pick them up when things get tough or seem to
fall apart. The individual athlete must make the decision and
commitment to continue improving, but the athlete is not alone in
making the journey.
Dealing with failure is very similar to
success. The athlete will first ask themselves what went wrong.
Very often, there will some relatively obvious answers. The coach
and others within the support system must then work cooperatively to
devise a plan to improve. This plan to improve will mostly include
ways to correct the mistakes identified. The only difference between
these mistakes after a failure vs. success is how easy one can
identify the mistakes. The process of developing the cooperative
plan is only step one of accepting the failure. The later steps and
longer part of the process is working through the plan (and likely
even adjusting the plan over time).
Whether you claim a result is a success
or a failure, it is not the final chapter. Determine what went right
and celebrate those aspects. However, also constructively evaluate
your performance for aspects that can be improved. Then develop a
plan to maintain the good aspects and ways to add to them going
forward. This is true for both successes and failures. As humans,
we are not perfect, always leaving chances to be better. Be proud of
your accomplishments, but be courageous in trying to be even better
next time.