Month: October 2019

Fuck Authority…

Apologies to our beloved fans and friends, we’ve been incommunicado for a couple of weeks now and you have all been very patient while you’ve waited for you next installment of A Mind of Its Own. Well we have some good news and we guess some bad news. The good news is you’ll no longer have to hear about the gorgeous weather of Queensland and Northern NSW or our team outings to the beach. And the bad news we are now in the thick of it, we are in the Nation’s Capital where it all happens and we’ll be able to keep you updated with all things legislation, legal and political as well as our usual anything goes twist on the topics that no one wants to talk about but everyone wants to hear about.

It’s not often we go on a rant but when people start attempting to jam values down our throats you can be sure it gets our goats. They say anger should be tamed and is the rawest of emotions well when you start to talk to the team at A Mind of Its Own about values and what you want to see from them. It certainly makes for an interesting conversation as well as an interesting blog that we put together outlining all the contradictions against the values that are being set out in which we should follow. For those that personally know anyone who has put time an effort into writing for this blog, you know that we have our own set of values, our own code that we live by. As a coach that we didn’t really get along with once said to us “You are only as good as your word”.

What made us start to write this was a little injustice, a little anger and a little in the fact that we feel we have and are good at what we do whether it is writing this blog or our day to day job that pays the bills and keeps the lights on here. You can tell us what to do, you can micromanage us but at the same time we work best when we are left to get along with whatever it is we are doing. Values to us are going to be different for each and everyone, they are a personal choice and they are compass on the path to morality in our eyes. A guiding light if you will, what you value, who you value and how you value those those things in your eyes reflects on you as a person. So it’s safe to say when we see someone talk about values only to steer clear of following any of them or completely ignoring them in the face of greed and corruption we tend to become a little irate.

Companies do it all the time, they’ll create corporate values employees are to follow as part of their contracts and yet the higher up that corporate ladder you climb the less likely you are to actually follow any of them. Call it corruption, call it greed, call it whatever you want but let’s be honest most of us aren’t great a wielding the power that comes with being a corporate bigwig working for multimillion dollar company. As you can imagine there are some passionate and potentially ego driven thoughts on this as we watch all these companies with a corporate responsibility to make the world a little better for those less fortunate. However most people running these companies tend to have some narcissistic traits that allow them to only think of themselves and the bonuses that will come their way. Do they then take these values into their personal lives?

One could only assume that would be the case, however the psychology behind it all it quite interesting to say the least. We can only assume and we all know assumptions tend to make and ass out of you and me as they say. So how do you go about working out what is important to you in terms of what you value in life. In a way this all ties back to the choices that you will be faced with throughout your life. What we fail to realise is that a lot of the choices we make will be underpinned our core values. These values tell us what kind of people we are, or want to be and provide us with guidelines or imperatives for our actions. We are somewhat governed by our values as they influence our decisions. But how do we choose our values and align them to to our lives, and all that we do?. Well let’s attempt to answer that for you, as well as outlining how big corporates shit all over their own values all day, every day in the quest of dollars.

Firstly what is a value? Well there is the dictionary definition but we are much happier with the definition given by Barb Markway and Celia Ampel in the ‘Self Confidence Workbook’. “Values are the principles that give our lives meaning and allow us to persevere through adversity,”. A lot of our values are handed down to us from our parents, our teachers, if you are religious than we guess religious leaders and finally from our societal environments we live in. Over time you will have somewhat rebelled and turned your back against those values or changed your mind on having some of them at your core as you’ve learnt about yourself and the world around you in which you are continuing to grow. Most people will decide on 6 to 8 core values which will steer them through life. They may change some of these throughout time as they reassess life but for the most part they will remain the same.

If you are unsure about your list of values or would like to clarify them, the first thing you need to do is create a list of values and for your sake make it wide ranging. The broader the list the better or you can just go on the internet and hit Google up for a list of values in order to help work out what your core values are. Dr Russ Harris has kindly provided such free lists on his website. From here you can pick your 6 to 8 values and hey by all means change them if you change your mind, it’s a good activity to do every now and then. Words on your list could be as following as an example, Financial Security; Compassion; Health/Fitness; Nature; Accomplishment; Creativity; Dependability; Loyalty; Beauty; Bravery; Gratitude; Love; Connection/Relationships; Learning; Leadership; Survival; Self-Preservation; Security; Adventure; Family; Work; Success; Calm; Freedom.

There are several other ways of working out what your core values are and labelling them, another way is to look at people you admire or love the most and why they are so important to you. By doing this you think of the values they embody most. You could also see a career counselor or life coach seeing as our values are a defining factor in our career choices. There is also online inventories and looking at yourself and learning, we also have the good and bad in life to look at that will help us with deciding on our core values. Most of you will already know what you value the most. It’s often just the reminder or prompting we need to remember them and solidify them in our minds. What we don’t remember though is we’ll often have values conflicting at any given time throughout our lives. At any given moment our values can be called into question, many of us often pay lip service to values or lose sight of our values as new and exciting things come into our lives.

Sometimes you’ll have to defend your values against difficult people, such as psychopaths, extreme narcissists, and master manipulators, who seem to be guided by negative values. With such people, it can be a challenge to stick to the positive values in your life. But that’s what will ultimately define your own set of values when you are faced with challenges that require you to block out all the outside noise and negativity to make your own choices in which people will want you to follow their behaviour and actions. It’s all part of not being the sheep and part of the flock and standing as a lone wolf on the periphery of the field watching and waiting to act. But when we look at organisations who define their values, they tend to want sheep, no wolves allowed because apparently being a good corporate citizen means you can’t and shouldn’t have an opinion or act on your own. You can think it, just don’t show it as it will no doubt shine a light on the values that are never upheld.

Take corporate company, we’ll call them Corporation A, they decided they needed 7 core values in which all they wanted their staff to abide by and demonstrate. There is just one small problem which you will soon see as we outline the values. Now there is no rule to how many values you should or shouldn’t have. Each of us will find our core values and priorities them based on what we want and or need in our lives at any given time. In a way we have our core values followed by our subsidiary values that will interchange when we require. Well that’s our take on it anyway now back to corporation A.

According to the company website “Values are the behaviours we want to see” sits above there Seven (7) core values. The seven values in no particular order along with their little spiel about each of the values are as follows:

  1. Trust – Building a trusting environment through being open, honest and transparent with each other.
  2. Respect – Through showing respect, we remain genuine and act with integrity towards each other and our customers.
  3. Simplicity – Simplicity means being straightforward, clear and focussed in all we do in the workplace.
  4. Focus on the Customer – We demonstrate value by listening, collaborating and delivering personalised and innovative solutions to enable shared success.
  5. Accountability – We each own our results and feel empowered and trusted to deliver required outcomes for us and our customers.
  6. Purposeful – We are passionate and driven to deliver with purpose for our customers and ourself.
  7. Learning – We are empowered through learning to continually develop insight and knowledge to add value to our customers.

Written like this they seem fairly reasonable and like values most good corporate citizens would want to get behind and support but when put into place would most corporations actually live up to and follow their own core values. Maybe from the outside looking in, they are and when speaking to clients it will look like the values are followed and supported but that is often far from the truth. Big corporates are in the business of making money. As such they will say and do whatever they can to win your business. They will paint you a picture of a wholesome, supportive, inclusive organisation that has equality at the forefront of everything they do for you and your company. The sad truth though, behind that mask is a different beast who’s greed doesn’t align with their values at all. The values above start to look a little like this:

  1. Trust – Building a trusting environment through being open, honest and transparent with each other. People will tell you that Trust is earnt and not given which we completely agree with however we do feel tenure and revenue generation should be taken into account when trusting your staff to do their jobs autonomously and with empowerment. Communicating openly with your staff at all levels is a sign of trust, empowering your staff is a sign of trust and doing what you say is a sign of trust. All things that are often overlooked by big corporate.
  2. Respect – Through showing respect, we remain genuine and act with integrity towards each other and our customers. Respect like trust is earnt and the harder you work, the more you give, the more you should be respected in an organisation. Unfortunately that is not always the case. Respect in Multi-million dollar corporation often hangs on the price tag of your suit or the amount of money you make for the company in question. The more you make the more you are respected until you aren’t because you choose to speak up or think outside the corporate box.Your ideas may not gel with the big wigs and their thoughts about the bottom line.
  3. Simplicity – Simplicity means being straightforward, clear and focussed in all we do in the workplace. In order for things to be simple it requires respect, trust and communicating with staff and clients, when we don’t do this, things tend to become rather convoluted and far from simplistic. People lose focus, nothing is ever clear and the workplace becomes an environment in which people do not thrive.
  4. Focus on the Customer – We demonstrate value by listening, collaborating and delivering personalised and innovative solutions to enable shared success. This is often overlooked by big corporations as they see value in doing what is going to make them the most money, not what is in the clients best interests. As long as they are making us money and decent margin there will be little collaborating and personalisation until it comes time to negotiate an extension to the contract..
  5. Accountability – We each own our results and feel empowered and trusted to deliver required outcomes for us and our customers. Owning your results would mean being empowered and you might have started to see a pattern here? All your values whether they are in the workplace or personal are interlinked. Organisations need to be trusting of their staff to empower them and allow them to become accountable.
  6. Purposeful – We are passionate and driven to deliver with purpose for our customers and ourself. While this should be the crux of delivery to all clients across all industries the all mighty dollar tends to drive whether or not a company is passionate about the delivery and purpose of said delivery to a client.
  7. Learning – We are empowered through learning to continually develop insight and knowledge to add value to our customers. Linked to all of the above and the fact that we are continually learn throughout our lives it saddens us when organisations are only willing to invest in their staff and empower them as long as they can see the dollar signs flying back at them in the short term. We are all responsible for our own learning however working for a multimillion dollar corporation they should be putting in place learning and development plans for all of their staff no matter what level they are within the organisation. As they say you have to spend money to make money.

Unfortunately it’s not just Corporation A who have values and seem to only follow them when they are trying to sell themselves. There are those people who will continually pay lip service to their own values as they feel that they are what society wants them to value and show in their lives. It’s those people who often tend to also fit somewhere on the narcissistic scale and always have an excuse or someone to blame as to why they are the way they are. But enough about people and companies disregarding their values. You are the Captain of your ship and master of your soul so it is on you to decide what’s right for you in terms of your goals, values and morals. They’ll influence each other but at the end of the day you are responsible for you and you make the decisions that set you on the path you are now headed down. The next step is the right step, value yourself and chase those dreams.

Well that will just about do it for another week and our return to regular broadcasting. We are back and now settled amongst the politicians, fireworks, porn and now weed. Canberra the place where all things illegal become legal at some point after all the biggest hypocrites always tend to be the people running a country. Don’t forget if there is a topic you’d love to see us cover you can leave a comment of contact us via the contact page. We’ll make it special and give you a shout out for doing so and it’ll be given that Mind of Its Own attention and detail. So for another week we bid you a fond farewell and good tidings, speaking of Christmas is fast approaching and the multi million dollar consumer industry is already pumping out the hype and decorations. Adios Amigos…

Growing On Me…

To adult or not to adult that is the question, whether it is immature to live in your youth and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous hangovers or take arms against a sea of problems. And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep, no more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that is heir to a hangover. It is a consummation devoutly to wish it away. To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream. There’s the rub, for in that sleep of hangover what dreams may come. When we have shuffled off to our jobs, it must give us pause, there’s the respect that makes calamity of such a long life. There’s something to be said for trying to relive your youth while you walk the earth in an older man’s body.

Yeah ok we may have just bastardised some of Shakespeare’s best work but heck who hasn’t had a crack at modernising that man’s greatest works into something that the youth of today can relate to or even understand. Then again with all their technology and instant gratification, freedom of choice and want it right now society they live in. No wonder they lack maturity and the ability to be part of society from time to time. Hence why we need to make the choice to adult or not to adult these days and it is just that a choice. In today’s society you can be anyone you want,anything you want and do pretty much anything you want, freedom of choice is at an all time high along with divorce, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and sexually transmitted infections.

Last week we spoke of hopes and dreams and this week we thought we’d follow up with growing up and being an adult. It might have something to do with all the sore heads and hangovers experienced by the writers here at A Mind of Its Own over the past couple of weeks ok the past month. In what has seemed like celebration after celebration the minds have grown weary and the body a little sore as they are poisoned with the flavours of the world. A journey around the world through alcohol but without the flights and hotels, the sights and sounds but with all the hangover experiences that often come from being in a city and sampling the local delights. But what is it all for? To numb the pain or quieten the mind? We all have our reasons and often a time throughout our lives we fall into the people we were not the people we have become.

And so we decided that this here blog you are now reading needed to be written in order for us all to give pause and question our actions and behaviours. Particularly those of the past couple of months as we attempt to drink our weight in beer, wine, whiskey, vodka and well anything containing alcohol someone joked that there was licking of wet wipes, we can promise you there wasn’t. There was cause for some celebration but a lot of it was an excuse to reclaim some of our youth as we tried to keep up with the younger blokes and prove to ourselves that we aren’t past it or ready for nights at home with a cup of tea instead of a pint of beer. As they say, It’s all for the character and the arrogant afterglow. What your parents handed down to you to handle. Make sure you carry torches when their putting out your candles, predictions can be unkind but unwind them still. Don’t erase the part of you that’s responsible for your will.

So as we sit here looking over what the last couple of months have brought us in terms of personal and professional development or lack there of. The lessons learnt and the lessons that needed to be learnt one thing has become more and more apparent. We are people that need to adult not just because as we type this out we realise that we are getting older and older every minute but more so because we want to follow our hopes and dreams. One thing we have learnt is that they certainly don’t come at the bottom of a bottle like trinket in a box of cereal. Reliving your youth every weekend certainly won’t help you reach those dreams, particularly if you are spending some of your weekend hungover and feeling sorry for yourself or hugging the royal dalton.

We aren’t saying that you shouldn’t let your hair down and have a good time every now and again but like all things, it’s something that should be done in moderation not just for your body but for your mind as well. Alcohol is a depressant expect for tequila apparently. Not everyone will agree with this approach and that’s ok because it depends on what you want out of life. The saying “Live your best life” is something that will resonate with everyone. It’s just whether we choose to adult and live that best life following those hopes and dreams. For some people this will mean making changes to their lives for the better. For others it will just mean continuing on doing what they have always done day in day out since they made the decision to grow up and act their age. And then we have the people that just decide to go the other way and hold onto their youth refusing to grow up.

We have never been ones to lecture or instruct, in fact we have always attempted to be the ones to start a conversation and get our readers thinking. The whole idea behind a mind of its own was to get people to think about things and start talking about them. Start talking about the things that no one wants to talk about or that have a stigma around them. We’ve written about mental health issues and will continue to shed some light, as well as start the conversation around them and the stigma that comes with them. The more we talk about these things the more common knowledge and accepting it becomes within the populace. And so as part of our decision to adult we will post a blog each week and continue to shed light for the people of the world. It’s not our duty or purpose it’s our want to write along with our ability to write that allows us to do so.

What does choosing to adult look like you ask? Well it’s different for each and everyone of us. For the writers here it’s drinking a little less, looking after our bodies, exercising a little more and frequently, eating healthier, along with being open and honest. Following our truth and allowing us to become more and more open with ourselves and those around us. Finding that vulnerability that we haven’t had or wanted to have in our lives. Knowing that it’s ok to not be ok from time to time and most of all striving towards all the things we want in our lives. It means not questioning everything that happens in life and accepting the person we are, flaws and all because the more you try to change that person, the more you lose who you truly are in this world. And in a world as superficial as the one we currently live in where social media only shows us the good in people’s lives it’s pretty easy to lose the true you in all of that.

Being an adult or adulting doesn’t mean you have to become boring and have no fun at all but it does mean that you need to start prioritising what’s truly important to you in this world and the next. You begin to see life in a different manner and begin to put others before you. You sacrifice the little things in order to get the big things or the things that are most required for you and those that you love. Most of us begin to make good decisions and prepare for the future we put money away for a rainy day, we pay our bills, we make time for those we want to spend our time with. It means doing the things you often don’t want to do, like the days when you just want to lounge around in bed and know that you have to get up and go to work whether you like it or not. It’s all part of being an adult. With age comes responsibility to yourself and to others, it’s just the way it is. You can choose to adult or you can choose to continue to act like a child and never grow up like Peter Pan in Never never land.

We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again and we’ll probably said it until we are blue in the face, everything in life comes down to a choice. You hold all the power and you get to make the initial choice that puts you on the path. Without action the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that, intentions said by the man Jordan Belfort himself. So you can choose to sit around and talk about things all day, every day or you can be a person of action who actually wants to get on with things and be an adult. Be you and follow your hopes and dreams. If you want to write, write, you want to dance, dance. If you want to practice law or medicine, do it. But the point is to do something and stop being people that talk about things. Actions speak louder than words as they say ladies and gentleman. It’s time to adult and time to stand up if that’s what you want to do. You can party every now and then but for now it’s time to write the next chapter in your book of life.

Equally if you want to be the centre of attention and the person everyone knows will be up for some fun go ahead no one is going to stop you but don’t be surprised when people question you about growing up or being someone you are not. Whilst it might upset you perhaps people know you and see you for who you truly are. Something that you’ll learn as you mature and decide to adult full time and not just part time as you make your way to work. Or when you hangout with friends and family who have all made the step in the direction to adult or at least attempt to do so. You’ll question things and you’ll want answers to questions that you may never get but guess what? That’s life sunshine not everything is going to happen the way you want it to. You’ll have good times and bad that’s just the way it is welcome to the world of growing up and being an adult now either shit or get off the pot!

So what’s the point of all this, well the point is that at some point in life we all have to grow up but it’s up to us when we choose to do so and much we choose to do so. Life is what we make it and growing up is a choice we choose to make at some point throughout life. It just comes along at different times for all of us. Some of us realise on a night out that we have grown up and are ready to wind it back. The young drunken kids stumbling past us are a constant reminded that we are too old for this shit. The 4 day hangovers are just another reminder but what it really is reminds us that we are ready to truly settle down is the want to be better people. Not that any of us would change the lives we’ve had. They’ve made us the people we are and allowed us to do the things we have including write this blog week in week out.

The writers of this blog are attempting to grow up, attempting to adult and looking to reach for their hopes and dreams. It starts with this blog and finishes with the book the bossman is currently writing along the way we’ll hopefully see a family and catch up with old and new friends. In the meantime we’ll pump out a conversation starter each week and get the people talking about all the things that they don’t want to talk about. Who knows next week we might even talk about the cost of tampons or sanitary pads that’ll get our male readers attention and our females readers wondering whether we’ve lost the plot finally and started to really kick the pot on the topics of the world.

Given that we are attempting to adult and be better people, we’ll stop wasting your time for the week and sign off with some rambling golden advice. Be good to yourself, be good to your friends, be good to your family and heck be good to strangers while we are at it. What’s the saying treat others how you want to be treated. It’s what a good adulting person would do right, well it’s what we’d do and it helps us lead into the next installment of A Mind of Its Own where we’ll attempt to talk about values without ranting or angry but we can’t make any promises. Adios Amigos…

Like Toy Soldiers…

Remember in school when you were told you could do anything you want if you put your mind to it? Well to some degree that is true, hopes and dreams are in reach and if you work hard enough you can certainly follow those dreams, however, sometimes life gets in the way and stops you from reaching those dreams and goals. Take the A Mind Of Its Own team for instance they all wanted to something else when they were children. Some of them followed their dreams and some of them came to their dreams later in life. Then there’s the genius behind A Mind of Its Own who is working on his dreams as a side project but before he found his love of writing he had a couple of other dreams that never came to fruition. So does that mean you should just give up on your dreams when you hit a few little speed bumps in the road? Nope, not at all…

Asking around we all went from dreams of being superheroes, ninjas, wrangling unicorns, being a cowboy, a spy, a ballerina married to Michael Jackson who drives a Mr Whippy van, an assassin. Ok so not everyone has dreams of becoming an imaginative, impractical professional when they grow up. Some people actually have dreams of becoming doctors, lawyers, nurses, police officers, hairdressers and other reputable career choices. So how and at what point do most of us go from imaginative creative hopes and dreams to practical, mundane careers that take us through to retirement. At what point in life do we mature enough to know that what we once wanted to be will no longer be within our reach.

For some of us it’s not until you receive the final rejection notice to say because you beat your body up playing sport when you were younger, that you will not be accepted into the service of your country despite passing all the requirements. Or the fact that you gave up on a potential career as an athlete because you weren’t driven enough. But at some point it clicks in that you can and will do great things in the world but it’s going to take some work, hard work that will often make you question the why. University isn’t for everyone and not everyone will go on to higher education and earn a degree or certifications for that matter. What’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander as the old saying goes.

And so to the home of research for answers, no we aren’t using Wikipedia for answers this time we are heading to a place that is bountiful in resources and books that will hopefully answer some questions we have burning away in our little brains as to how we become mature. Not since university have we set foot into a library and there is a reason why, firstly librarians whilst this one was easy on the eye and not your stereotypical librarian but she was still very grumpy and very unhelpful. In her defense we really weren’t too sure as to how or what we wanted to research regarding this week’s topic. Did we start with maturity or did we start with hopes and dreams, were there books on hopes and dreams. To the stacks we wandered and peered at row upon row books with titles that were somewhat ambiguous.

The first big book we opened was a psychology journal that we then had to go and find a dictionary in order to understand. We learnt a few things about people that we didn’t quite understand as well as confirming a few facts about the next generation that we really wanted validated. Yes ladies and gentlemen all your thoughts and fears have been confirmed the youth of today whilst being apparently intelligent are well behind the curve when it comes to emotions. According to studies, the science variety from the ages of 11-14 we lose connections between cells in parts of the brain that enable us to think clearly and make good decisions. So on that note maturation must happen in most people after the age of 14 or 15.

Pruning the brain, or synaptic pruning, What happens is that the brain prunes itself, going through changes that will allow a young person to move into adult life effectively. “Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape,” wrote Alison Gopnik, professor of child development at UC Berkley. According to Ian Campbell, a neurologist at the U.C. Davis Sleep Research Laboratory. Mood swings and uncooperative and irresponsible attitudes can all be the result of these changes. Sometimes, we can’t explain why we feel the way we do. Our brains are changing from a child’s brain to an adult brain.

So we now know that our maturity is affected by changes in the brain and that it prepares us for adult life. So perhaps it through these years that we lose track of those hopes and dreams that just aren’t quite realistic or impractical as we go through maturation and those weak connections are pruned away to create adult ideas and adult hopes and dreams. It’s strange how we go from being carefree and footloose to having to be an adult on a daily basis. As we continued to search for connections as to how and why we grow and mature as people we read a lot of journals, articles and even a magazine or two on the science behind the psychology of why we develop intellectually and make changes in our lives. We aren’t saying that people follow their dreams from a young age but the majority of people change what they want to do.

A lot of us fall into jobs that we don’t necessarily want to do, we work away until we become so good at what we do there is no other path or we get paid a decent salary and have become accustomed to the lifestyle we are keen to keep. There are still plenty of people between the ages of 30-50 that don’t know what they want to do with their lives. A couple of the writers here are in that boat. Heck the bossman would love to write books for a living and the dogs well they’d love to be free range puppies that could do what they like when they liked. But as some point we all have bills to pay and people to look after so we all work and our hopes and dreams go off to die in a field of shattered dreams with most of the other adult population.

Where does the inspiration come from for those that know what they want to do for a living, what makes their brain pruning different to everyone else’s that they continue to carry those hopes and dreams into adulthood. Now there are always going to be elements or environments that influence and impact those final decisions to make sure we are truly dedicated to the path we are walking. It’s like all things in life, you know you are truly focussed and dedicated to a dream you’ll make it come true or die trying. Take athletes for example they are dedicated to their hopes and dreams following them through to the very end of their career but what about when their bodies give out? Do they have new hopes and dreams, do they continue to hold onto the life they formally had or do they create a new one after they’ve achieved as much as they can on their road to glory.

Diving into articles on the wonderful world of the interweb we came across several on why athletes are so driven to achieving their hopes and dreams. In one such article posted they explained that athletes have skills that are transferable to everyday life. These skills are gained through years and years of playing their sport and navigating through daily challenges of life. Traits such as Grit, Persistence, Competitive and Confidence are valuable throughout the various aspects of life.

Athletes usually endure failure better than anyone else because they experience so much of it throughout their athletic careers. By nature, athletes are goal driven; they often set high, specific expectations and goals to obtain awards, as well as championships. At one point or another, they are unsuccessful at achieving the goal(s) they set; which can be considered a failure. All athletes handle failure differently, but almost all eventually learn through it in some way. They persevere and continue to perform, despite experiencing failure. After all, it is said that the true measure of an athlete’s character and ability, is in how they handle themselves in the face of adversity or failure. Every single person experiences failure no matter the circumstance, but like Rocky said: “It is never about how many times you get knocked down. It’s about whether or not you get up afterwards.”

Below are several things that we can learn from athletes failures:

  1. Failure allows reassessment and feedback. It’s life’s greatest teacher. Successful athletes who experience a lot of failure in their career, are often some of the most successful because they are able to re-evaluate why they didn’t reach their goals, change direction and move forward. Failure is simply just feedback for what you need to do next time in order to be successful. It helps you analyze what went wrong in any given situation and take measures for getting it right next time. Babe Ruth, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, set the record for the most home runs in a season. In the same season, he also struck out more than any other player in Major League Baseball. According to the Seattle Times, he struck out 1,330 times over his career; however, he was able to rise above his failures to hit 714 home runs. For Babe Ruth, failure was just feedback, telling him what he needed to do in order to be successful in the long run.
  1. Failure brings about resilience and mental toughness. Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from any type of adversity or how to adapt in a disruptive situation or occurrence. Mental toughness is the ability to consistently perform toward the upper range of your talent and skill regardless of competitive circumstances. In athletics, these both can refer to trials due to injury, critics or fans, weather conditions and other uncontrollable variables. Most often it implies experiencing failure in some type of way. Resilience and mental toughness instill that “Never give up” attitude in athletes and pushes them through to reach their goals. The greatest athletes continue to be resilient and mentally tough despite the obstacles they face. Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, were down 3 games to 1 to the Golden City Warriors in the 2016 NBA finals. Although, the series seemed out of reach, they gained resilience and mental toughness, coming back to win the series 4-3 and ending the season as the 2016 NBA Champions.
  1. Failure is the only way to succeed. We only grow or reach success out of being in uncomfortable situations and that’s exactly what failure is. Failure is downright uncomfortable and never feels good. It certainly hurts a lot to lose and fail, but regardless of the emotional toll it takes on you, it is the quickest way to learn how to win. Take legendary NFL coach Tom Landry, for example. As the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Landry led the team two Super Bowl victories, five NFC Championship victories, and is one of the most winningest coaches of all time. He is also widely known for having one of the worst first seasons on record, not winning a single game. In each of his next four seasons, his team also recorded five or fewer wins. He failed repeatedly and that is largely why he is known as one of the greatest coaches of all time. Even Michael Jordan is quoted by saying: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Athletes who fail over and over, only to eventually succeed, are the ones who resonate the most in our hearts. They are the ones who we cheer for the hardest and the ones who give us hope that anything is possible, regardless of how unachievable the goal might seem. When these types of athletes succeed, it shows us that failure is never fatal and that it is okay to not get it right the first time. We may not always realize it, but athletes inadvertently teach us about how strong we are and what we are able to accomplish if we keep pushing on. Most of all, athletes teach us that even if failure is in sight, going through it is the only way to reach the plateau of success.

It’s safe to say that we should and often do look up to athletes as a source of inspiration or guidance when it comes to following our hopes and dreams. They set examples of what we should do and more importantly they show us that it’s ok to fail every once and awhile. But they allow us to hold onto those hopes and dreams while showing us that things take time and hard work. You can have hopes and dreams but they’ll remain just that if you don’t have a little spunk about you to fight for what you want. That’s the extra drive that those athletes tend to have over the rest of us, those extra skills that we don’t seem to be to possess until we’ve failed once or twice.

So until next week we’ll leave you with this, follow your dreams, keep your hopes and most of all work towards them even if they take your entire life to come true you hold on to them. Keep on working and make it happen no matter how long it takes, stay the path, stay true to yourself and never stop dreaming. Oh and always dream big, without big dreams this little blog would never have happened and the people who write it wouldn’t be where they are today. So we’ll leave you be as you continue to pursue your hopes and dreams and we’ll get to work on the next installment of A Mind of Its Own. Adios amigos…