Failure not the end of the world, but a possible launch pad for future success says Steph Inglis
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SO you failed… that’s it then! I didn’t really want (whatever you were trying to reach) anyway, so who cares? But failing isn’t so bad, and it’s what comes after failing that is the exciting part of the journey towards your goals.
Change ‘that’s it, I’m done’ to ‘OK, what’s next?’
We have all failed at some point in our lives. Picture a baby learning how to walk, now picture them when they fall onto their bum. We have all been that child. We failed repeatedly learning how to walk. Now what if we fell on our bum one day and just thought ‘right, that’s enough, I’ve given it a try, I’m finished!’
Babies are so resilient they get up time and again and that mentality gets forgotten as we age.
Failing isn’t fun, but what scares me is to just stop and not try again. As a privileged woman, I have the luxury knowing that tomorrow is a new day, another opportunity to work hard, do better, chase my dreams and I am not going to let something like failure stand in my way. I am going to use it to be better and help me reach my goals.
It’s easy to say these things but they can be pretty useless comments at times so let me share with you some (and I have many) of my failures which I am thankful for!
In 2013, the qualification year before the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, it was the most successful, stressful and emotional sporting year in my career. I experienced a lot of success including qualifying for the Games but what many don’t hear about (because why would we share them?) are the failures. I had a lot of setbacks during that year. I flew halfway round the world as a self-funded athlete and lost a first fight which meant I was out of the whole competition, no qualification points and ultimately a waste of time and money.
Sadly, this happened more than once during my judo career. Flying back home, you contemplate walking away. It would be easy, no more hard physical training, making weight for competition, fighting other girls who wanted to batter me and then dealing with the embarrassment of coming home with nothing OR go back to the drawing board. Return to training with a fire in your belly knowing you didn’t want to go through those emotions again so strived to improve.
This was exciting. Sure, I would rather have just won all my career but if it hadn’t been for those failures, I would not have medalled at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. Why? For each failure there is a reason and most importantly a lesson!
Some reasons for my failures at competitions was that I wasn’t strong enough, I couldn’t handle left-handed players, my groundwork judo wasn’t good enough. Identifying this gave me focus. Then as I entered further competitions, I experienced a mixture or success and failure, both welcomed as I could reflect on the areas that were working well and tighten up on ones not so good. My confidence grew.
When I turned up to the Games, I knew I was in the best shape of my professional judo life. Ultimately you can argue that I failed that day coming away with silver, but looking back, had I not experienced all my previous failures, I may not have even reached that judo stage, never mind the podium!
Failures are an opportunity. And ‘failing’ at the Commonwealth Games might have helped give me that extra fight or mental toughness to survive my accident, but that is a different story.
All I am trying to say is don’t see failure as a bad thing. Sure it’s something we don’t particularly like, but we will all experience it time and again. Use it as a learning opportunity to get better.
