Dealing with Failure

Dealing with failure is never easy. You work your arse of for weeks on end then the outcome isn't what you wanted. But I honestly believe failure is a good thing.

I recently competed on the Tideway for Schools Head of the River and going into it we felt confident, not cocky just confident. We'd won at Hampton by 6 seconds, I'd been training hard and our technique had really improved. The day before the race was relaxing and as a crew we felt really bonded. The race, apart from one hiccup as another crew cut in front of us as we were overtaking, went well and we overtook 5 crews. Tired legs aside, we were really happy with how the race had gone.

And so came the long wait for results. When they were finally uploaded my heart was beating so fast and then I read the result. When the coaches asked for the result, I told them and received two mixed shrieks. This didn't help my deflated mood. My heart sunk as I re-read the results. I just couldn't understand what had happened. We'd trained hard, we'd had a good race and then the result was so far off what we expected. I felt like we'd failed. 

With time to think about the outcome, we decided to have a team meeting to discuss the results. The coaches had analysed previous race results from us and the crews we raced. What we thought had been an awful result actually turned out to be not too bad. We hadn't lost time, we had improved and there were external factors that we simply couldn't control and in retrospect we had actually done okay.  

It still wasn't what we wanted though and we can't change that but we can change what might happen in the future. One of my favourite quotes from one of my coaches is 'how you come back from a setback will define who you are as an athlete'. Now we know what we have to do, we can step up our training to achieve what we want at the end of it. We've got training camp in less than 20 days and I couldn't be more excited. We have a goal in our sights and we know it's achievable even with this setback because although we thought we'd failed we actually hadn't. 

Just because we didn't get our result that doesn't mean we failed. To fail would mean we would give up. The key thing is, failure isn't the end of the road, it's simply a small bump that slows you down. For me, failure spurs me on to work harder because I don't want to experience the feeling of failure. Because I didn't work hard enough in Biology last year, I'm having to resit this year and I'm working harder to achieve a better result. If I don't get the time I want on an ergo, I'll train harder until the next one. 

The hugely successful author J.K.Rowling famously got turned down by 12 publishing companies before finally getting her book deal. If she'd given up at every 'failure' she'd probably be a lot less wealthy and we wouldn't have all the Harry Potter books and films that everyone raves about (I wouldn't know, I haven't read or seen any!). If Walt Disney had given up when he was fired for 'lacking ideas' from a newspaper we'd all be living a life without Disney Princes and Princesses, magical theme parks and ridiculously catchy songs. 

There are many famous failures who can inspire us to keep going. So, the next time you fail, or think you fail, take a step back and look at how far you've come, how much you've improved. Think about what you can do to not fail again and just never give up.

Thanks for reading! 
Charlotte 
XO