How to cope with failures
Accidents, illnesses, injuries and defeats - alas, failures are an integral part of the cyclist's life. What matters is how you deal with them.
To be honest, we all sooner or later face setbacks and disappointments, and often after that we begin to doubt our own capabilities. Whether it's missing a race, an unexpected decline of strength, lack of confidence, or just unsatisfactory results - all this may seem like the end of the world. In fact, periodic failures are the most important catalyst for the development of an athlete.
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Ianto Barker, who plays for One Pro Cycling, says: “In a 20-year career, I managed to face many setbacks. When everything is good, anyone can look decent, but for me the real test of the level of an athlete is and will be how he copes with failures. There are several stages that I personally need to go through in order to return even more strong and confident after the failure. The secret is to accept the fact of the incident as quickly as possible. The sooner this happens, the sooner you can proceed to the recovery process. ”
Curb emotions
Your task is to separate yourself from the emotions that have been played out around failure. If you cannot do it on the go, imagine that this failure did not happen to you, but to your friend or teammate. This will cool the mind a bit and allow for a more rational view of the situation.
Try to figure out which factors influenced this outcome, and which of them you can influence. The more factors you determine, the more effective the plan to eliminate them.
Basic principles
- Approach your own failures constructively and see them as an opportunity for improvement.
- Analyze the causes and determine those that you are able to influence
- Set a new goal and create a plan to achieve it.
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Learn from mistakes
If emotions start to take over, remember that failure is often the best way to learn new skills.
“I believe that in case of failures we will always learn more than in case of victories. First we must find out what exactly and why went wrong. Then we need to determine not only what we need to work on, but also what we don’t need to do anymore, ”says Barker.
If you learn to look at failures from this angle, they will become a valuable source of progress, allowing you to become better, stronger, and stronger.
What do we have to do
- Sit down and analyze the causes of the incident. What factors influenced a similar course of events, and which of them are you able to control?
- Do something not earlier than in a month. Try to understand what you learned from failure. Determine which part of the analysis and planned activities yielded results, and how this can be used to further improve athletic performance.
- Set yourself a goal and create a clear action plan for its implementation. Keep track of which points of the plan help to get closer to the goal, and which - not. Make the appropriate adjustments, but do not deviate from the course.
What not to do
- Do not dwell on the negative, because in any incident it is necessary to find positive moments. Constructively incorporate them into the action plan, effectively using your strengths and making the appropriate changes.
- Do not give up and do not panic. Approach the solution of the problem as if you were giving advice to a comrade who survived a similar failure. By all means try not to move on to emotions, and break the action plan into several small, but clearly understandable and doable points.
- Do not take failure as a disaster. In fact, very rarely everything is really as bad as we first imagine. Look at the situation as remotely as possible, and then calmly and rationally decide what to do to get back to business.