5 Reasons why attempts are more important than victories
Do you remember the moment when you succeeded? How did you feel? Wasn’t it amazing? The feeling of euphoria.
And now imagine the moment when you failed. Exactly the moment when you were trying as hard as you could, but still you failed? How bad was that? Ridiculously unpleasant feeling, wasn’t it?
Let’s try to make something fun with our brain now. Let’s try to shift our way of thinking. Just right now. I’ll give you as many examples as possible showing “why your efforts and attempts develop you faster than just your victories and successes”. And why sometimes your failures are better than success in terms of growth.
1. If we think about great champions in sports, they don’t just search for challenges, they are hungry of challenges. The more difficult challenge is, the faster they develop and *stretch*. For example, Mia Hamm, one of the greatest soccer players of all times says “All my life I was trying to challenge myself with players bigger, older, faster and better than me”. First, she played with her older brother, at ten, she joined the eleven-year-old boys’ team. “Each day I attempted to play up to their level and I was improving faster than I ever dreamed possible”
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40745.Mindset
2. Here is the reflection of one female athlete on this topic. She says that since childhood she was often praised for her intelligence rather than her efforts and slowly she developed aversion and dislike to difficult challenges. It affected her approach to academic, athletic and emotional challenges. It was her greatest learning disability – this habit to see performance as reflection of her character. And if she couldn’t accomplish something easily, she avoided the task instead of challenging herself
3. One of the best gifts you can give to yourself is to teach yourself to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy the effort and keep learning. This way you’ll stop to be a addicted to praise.
4. One great basketball trainer says “You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you’ll become a LOT better”
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40745.Mindset
5. Another baseball trainer had such an approach to his players: he didn’t expect them to win each and every time. They should do their best. “Did I win? Did I lose?”. These are the wrong questions. He says, – “You may be an outsider, but you will NEVER lose.
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40745.Mindset
Questions:
- Do you think it’s more important to focus on your victories or attempts? And why?
- What is your approach to challenges in life (for ex. learning algebra)?
- What were the biggest challenges in your life and how did you overcome them?
- What do you think about Mia Hamm’s approach? Do you agree with here or not?
- What motivates you to work harder/more?
Source: “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol S. Dweck.
Comments
My approach is firstly get some motivation. When I analyse situation and find out that for example - if I would learn a lot now, it won't be necessary to take an exam at the end or simply I would have to learn less then. Motivation is very important while taking challenges.
One of the biggest challenge for me was to lose weight a few years ago. I have achieved my goal by discipline, systematicity and visualisation of my goals.
If I have challenge in my life I always divide it on smaller tasks and step by step complete them.
My actual goal is to finish my studies and the future perspectives motivate me the most.
In my opinion it is important to start something and take the attempt of it, but on the other hand not finishing something can be harmful to us, if we do it too often and get used to the idea that we can always quit. I think it achieving something is as important as the attempt, because if you achieve it, it means you are persistent and result oriented.
If I feel something is more difficult to me than something else, I simply spend more time or put more effort on learning it and usually it helps. Of course, there are areas which we are better at and worse at, some are totally not in our field of interests, but it is worth to give it a try.
To me it is to organize my work, studies and private life all together, since das have way too few hours for that.
I agree that it can be a lot more efficient and quick to look up to people who are better than us in a specific field, so we feel we want to follow their level and therefore we can compare our current level of knowledge and keep on developing it.
My biggest motivation is my fiance actually, we motivate each other with who we want to be and what we want to do. On the other hand, the visualisation of what I want to do in few years motivates me as well.
When I fail, I tend to train much harder than I do when I achieve success. When I for example win some kind of competition, I think that I’m good enough and become much more lazier.
Only way to develop yourself is challenging yourself.
In my opinion it is the education system that is at fault. They give us grades and usually it doesn't really matter if we actually learned something.
My dreams help me to work harder every day. I know exactly what life I want for myself and there is alway a passion in me to work to achieve my dream.
But I still think that the person should face different challenges. The attempts are better, for sure.