Failure

I absolutely love this image.  It is going to be something I will put up in my classroom, at home, on the baseball diamond, in my car, whatever! 

The image on the left shows what most people think.  You either have it, or you don't.  I can remember growing up and thinking and feeling the same thing.  I never had anyone tell me or show me an image like the one on the left.  Now I don't know if that would have changed my thinking or beliefs or not at that time.  I would like to think it would have. 

It still continues to amaze me that people still think the image on the left is still the reality.  We all know and have heard of the success stories of many different people in business that have been down to their last dollar and took the risk in something.  It's always hard to believe those stories.  We tend to think (or at least I do)  "Why can't that be me."  We all have a tendency to not take risks because it is scary.  Kids are the same way.  They don't like to do things that are difficulty.  Fear of failing. 

We need to encourage failure and tell kids it is part of the PROCESS!  I love that word.  Failure is a scary thing.  Kids believe that if they fail, they are stupid.  That feeling becomes a mindset.  And eventually, we are raising kids who are always afraid to take risks. 

I refer to this on the baseball field all the time.  Baseball (an most every sport) is a game of failure.  In the span of a season, hitting .300 is amazing.  That means, you have failed 7 out of 10 times.  Failing that much is hard to deal with.

There are many great quotes on this. 

Michael Jordan:   I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Mickey Mantle:  During my 18 years I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1700 times and walked maybe 1800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.

These are two quotes we have in our classroom.  I refer to them all the time to help the students realize that failure is part of success.  I encourage them to fail all the time.  My philosophy has changed from the image on the left, to the image on the right.  It hasn't been an easy switch and I still get that old feeling in my mind, but I continually reflect on what it takes to actually get to the point of success.  And I know it involves failing.  As hard as failure is to take, you have to be able to get over it and recover.  You have to have self talk; reassurance that in the end, if I believe in the PROCESS, I will come out successful. 

This is another mindset and it takes time to change.  As adults, we have to allow kids to fail.  We do have to know how to support kids during this time.  We have to reassure them things will be alright.  We have to provide them with examples in our own failures and how we learned from them.  We must be the ones to provide this to them.  The sooner we learn to deal with failure as a good thing, the better.  It will make you a success in the end. 

The Process

Being a coach has always helped me with my teaching.  Coaching is something I am very passionate about.  One thing that always comes up is "THE PROCESS."  I often wondered what this meant.  As a player growing up, I had heard it, but never really understood it.  As I have become more experiences, the process has become one of the more important things in my teaching and coaching. 

"THE PROCESS" is all the things you do that lead you to an end result.  In sports, the process is all your practices, your workouts, your mental training, your sacrifices, etc.  It's your plan!  All of these things help make you a better player and help make you a better team.  The process doesn't include your batting average, wins and losses, your ERA or anything.  These things are the end result.  The process helps take care of those things.  If you stick with your process, you will be successful.  People that stray away from it, will falter.  Sticking to it is not easy work.  It is demanding.   It can be monotonous.  At times, it doesn't make sense.  But if you stick to it, the results will take care of themselves.  I tell players all the time that it's all about the process.  And once they begin to believe in it, they begin to slow things down and see success. 

Well to me, the same thing applies to education.  Your end result is to be successful.  In order to do this, you need to stick to the process. 

I tend to refer to the process as a GRIND (and by grind in mean: Get Ready It's A New Day).  Even when you are not at your best, you have to find a way to get things done.  And it can all be a GRIND.  I love referring to this after baseball games.  Win or lose tomorrow is a new day with a new challenge.  Or after a test in class.  Whether you did great of awful on it, tomorrow is a new day.  Even if it's just a bad day, you can always tell yourself it's a new day.  These things happen and if you stick to the process, your end result will be great. 

I think everyone from time to time gets away from it because it doesn't make sense.  There is always a tendency to take the easy way out, or maybe the way you think is best.  You need to trust your educators and coaches.  Believe in the process and understand there will be some bumps in the road.  There will be times things don't work out they way you expect.  There will even be moments where you think your teacher or coach is nuts because they keep referring to this thing call "THE PROCESS."  So in closing, you should talk to your kids about it.  We don't have enough conversations about things like this.  But believe in it.  In the end, everything will work out.