On failure

When you look back at my US collegiate career, what may come to mind is the match-winning spike to capture the first-ever men’s NCAA championship in Hawaii or you may remember the younger me as a scoring machine that accumulated 2,526 points making me the NCAA all-time leader in the rally-scoring era in total kills and attempts per set.

But I failed many, many times. To be more precise, in four seasons and 399 sets played:

· I committed 608 hitting errors
· I failed to kill the ball 2,312 times
· I failed to help my team win 31 matches
· I failed to help my team win the conference title twice in the championship game
· I failed to help my team qualify to the Final Four three times

Look at your goals and ask yourself, “Do I want this badly enough? If I do, then I could, and should be able to find a way.” You will fail along the way. There is no way around that.

But what separates the great competitors from everyone else is the perseverance to get back up after every failure. To keep fighting and believing in yourself. To go for the next winning kill even if you missed the last big spike.

I tell my daughters that I have yet to meet somebody who has gone through life undefeated.

The many failures, on and off the volleyball court, I shared with my readers in my memoir fortified me. Those failures were necessary – they were an opportunity for me to improve, grow, and develop. They were not a threat despite bruising my ego. They allowed me to look fear in the eye and then…go. Leap into the dark. Because if we don’t go, what looms? Regret. Shame. A lost opportunity to work toward bridging the gap between promise/potential and reality.

I have failed over and over and over again in my life and that’s ok. Those frequent failure miles have allowed me to build up “antibodies” to survive the fear of failure epidemic.

Be well.