The #1 Mistake Athletes Must Avoid when Learning from Failure
Athletes must never forget that the opportunity to learn from failure is just an opportunity. Furthermore, it’s an opportunity that one can only seize by doing specific things with intention. In other words, you can’t just give the idea of learning from failure lip service. Unquestionably, there is a large gap between saying and doing.
The work athletes must do after a failure requires a significant amount of self-reflection. That self-reflection must focus on:
- Identifying the specific mistakes made to cause the failure.
- Working on specific drills and processes to permanently eradicate those mistakes from happening again.
With that said, as an athlete does these two things, they must simultaneously avoid one critical error that will sabotage their ability to learn. RUMINATION!
Rumination in the context of a failure is repeatedly visualizing the failure and reliving the mistakes repeatedly. As stated by sports phycologist Vietta E. Wilson, Erik Peper, and Andrea Schmid in the textbook Applied Sport Psychology:
Each time athletes recite (verbally or mentally) a previous failure, they condition their mind to make the failure the preferred motor pattern. The verbal retelling to others or the chronic rumination on why one made a mistake is a type of global visual-motor behavior rehearsal in which one is training the mind to perform the same failure behavior again.
Indeed, the goal is to learn from failure, not visualize the failure repeatedly. Moreover, you don’t have to relive the failure to learn from it. Instead, athletes must identify the new behavior to replace the old behavior and relive that experience as a success as they visualize the new behavior.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to not ruminate. Learning from failure can and does lead to success. But it must be done the right way.