“Your greatest enemy is self-doubt. Remember the Armstrong motto: Invicteus Maneo—”I remain unvanquished.” Only you can determine your success or failure.”–Lessons for Liam
I wrote the above for my son while he was still in the womb. I continue to try and stress this lesson to him. It is interesting to watch him evolve and progress in school and sports. He seems to prefer the sports that involve the greater self-determination—lacrosse (goalie) and wrestling. He is learning to execute failure in practice to learn and be better for the game or match. He is learning to take risks—to extend his personal capacity. This has much to do with his coaching, but there is also an element of maturation. It is exciting to watch.
Confidence is really just the absence of self-doubt. It is built by failure, not success. Repeated success, whether by raw talent or luck, sets one up for a fall. It leads to cockiness, which I consider false confidence. Confidence instills fear in one’s opposition. Cockiness is motivation to the opposition. One who is confident knows his or her strengths and weaknesses and how to use them. One who is confident knows how and when to take risks—they have very little self-doubt. One who is cocky has zero self-doubt, but knows only his or her strengths. One who is cocky has no experience with failure. When they fall, and they ultimately do, the fall is hard.
I had a conversation with a colleague recently about “grit”—defined as (“perseverance and passion for long-term goals”—Angela Duckworth). We discussed how we are failing to develop grit in our children and the repercussions this has for our society. It is important that we not only allow our children to fail, but encourage them to do so (when, of course, it is appropriate.) Sports and academics are a great avenue for the development of confidence through failure, but we must allow failure as parents as well.
I stress: be your best today; be better tomorrow. Today’s best is not perfection. Today’s best identifies the weaknesses that will make us better tomorrow—if we learn from them.
I learned a very important lesson in graduate school. I minored in Anatomy and studied under Dr. Dennis Morse at the (then) Medical College of Ohio. My small group of peers would progress, self-paced, through our dissections of human cadavers. Once a week, Dr. Morse would come in and grill us on the region we were studying. Invariably, he would ask us questions we did not know. Rarely did I ever answer a question correctly (though, more often than not, I knew the answers to my colleagues’ questions—and the same was true for my colleagues). I could never understand how I was managing to get A’s in the courses. I didn’t understand until my oral comprehensive exam—the exam that all PhDs must endure to complete the degree. Dr. Morse started with questions that I expected and for which I was well-prepared. He, then, progressed to increasingly challenging questions for which I had not specifically studied. His final question was: “If you were to make an incision in the abdominal wall, what would you encounter from superficial to deep.” I am sure my first thought was “Oh, sh**.” After a deep breath, I walked through what I learned (not studied). His response to my answer was: “Wow! I didn’t expect you to get all that. I am done.” I literally aced my Anatomy comprehensive exam. I share this here (and I often share this story with my students) not to show how smart I am—I am really not that smart—but to make that point of how it is failure, not success, that causes us to learn and to grow.
I believe we make a huge mistake in education by defining success as scores on standardized exams. As well, we function under the falsehood that self-esteem is something to be protected rather than something to be developed or, dare I say, earned. As teachers, we write tests expecting our students to score better than 90% (an A). Students, likewise, expect the same. Unfortunately, this does little more than identify what the student already knows. Dr. Morse seemed to already know what I knew. He was more interested in revealing what I did not know so that I would learn these things. It worked.
Dr. Morse’s approach gave me confidence in what I know and the ability to use this knowledge to process and formulate answers to the questions in life for which the answer was never provided. I rarely doubt the answers I give to my students.
In sports and life, failure teaches us to overcome self-doubt and not be afraid to challenge ourselves. Failure also helps us overcome the fear of rejection or the sense that rejection is a bad thing.
I often apply the “overload principle” to more than exercise science. The overload principle states that in order for a body system to adapt, it must be stressed to a level greater than that to which it is accustomed. In life, this means pushing beyond our comfort-zone, extending beyond the familiar—risking failure. It is the only way to overcome self-doubt.
Be your best today; be better tomorrow.
Carpe momento!
Below is a link to a Forbes article on the “5 Characteristics of Grit” that is worth the read.