The Part I Love About a Good Failure Story
If you watched the Olympics or Paralympics this year, you saw two things happen over and over:
#1. People achieving their dreams.
#2. People failing at something they worked very, very hard for.
The first thing — the achievement — is always fun to watch. It comes in all shapes and sizes. Maybe it was competing at the Games. Maybe it was making a final. Or maybe it was winning a medal. Achievement is an individual metric and I can’t tell someone they did or did not achieve - only they can answer that.
The failures, on the other hand, can be heartbreaking. But I think they’re just as important to see. (Important for our kids to see, too.)
It’s easier to talk about enjoying the journey than it is to talk about failure. Yet we need to talk about it, because failure is part of growth, learning, goal setting and doing great things. It’s also part of the grieving process. Something I’ve talked about before so I won’t go down that rabbit hole today.
It also really sucks sometimes.
Believe me, I know.
Back in the 2006 Olympics, my team and I had everything going for us. Expectations were high. It was the thing my team and I had dedicated every single second of our lives to.
And we blew it. We were supposed to medal and finished 7th.
My hometown paper, The Buffalo News, quoted my 27-year-old athlete reaction after the drumming we took:
"It's not a nightmare, but it's a terrible, terrible, awful disappointment. There was nothing else to do here but medal," Mesler said. "We had 14 days to suffer and agonize and watch our countrymen go out there one by one on the chopping block. Today was our day. I would love to say we succeeded, but we didn't. We failed."
"It's something I thought about when I stood up at the top," he said. "Was this my last chance? Is this the last time I get to do this? You never know. It wasn't the only shot, but it was a shot. This was a huge shot. And it's gone."
"I was so looking forward to come back and show something off," Mesler said. "Now I'm going to have to wait four years. It's going to be a long, long wait. I'm not going to forget this feeling. It's a God-awful, miserable feeling."
That reporter, Bucky Gleason (one of the best sportswriters I’ve ever known, btw) actually texted me the next day to apologize for printing all of that. He thought it may have been a bit too raw for me to read, and I appreciated that. So I thanked him and was, even in the moment, pretty proud of myself for just putting it out there and not sugar-coating it.
Now, you and I both know that I was able to return and get the victory I’d been longing for. But I didn’t know it at the time.
And of course, I’m certainly not the only one. In my bobsled career, I've seen more guys’ dreams dashed in 5 seconds than I ever thought possible. That's all you get: five seconds. You train for 20 years and you get five seconds.
I really appreciated track athlete Emma Coburn’s beautiful rant after her disappointing loss in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in Tokyo. I loved that she said “It sucks to suck on the biggest stage,” (I’m telling you - go read that link, it’s awesome) because you know what, it does suck. I sent her a message the moment I read that and simply stated that I thought she was feeling the way she was supposed to.
And that’s OK.
It’s going to be hard sometimes, whether you’re a kid learning to ride a bike, or an adult pursuing your biggest dreams.
I don’t think we should try to avoid it. Instead, maybe we just need to practice embracing the suck a little more and not try to find ways to make ourselves feel better… right away.
And that’s what I love about a good failure story. Acknowledge it. Don’t defend the reasons. Own it. And then, move on.
Let’s learn to fail better — and teach our kids to do the same.
- Steve
