Mistakes, failures

He who makes no mistakes makes nothing.
This Saturday afternoon was different than other days ….
Not because the weather was not particularly good or there was an important holiday. It was a unique day because of the great challenge that awaited me. On this day, I fought to be in the final four at the Traditional Karate World Championship.
Before the competition, I trained hard, sometimes with tears in my eyes. With pain and effort, I did not have time to get up from my bed. The whole training period I was focusing on only one goal – to win!

Unfortunately … I lost. I made mistakes.
I screwed up.
I did not do what I should have done
It was my fault.
My plans were ruined …. it hurt, it hurt like hell. I do not know if it’s more because I lost in the worst possible way, i.e. without awarding points, by the judge, or because I knew what I could have done better. Maybe because I was so close and nothing came of it.

I fought with my thoughts, blamed myself for failing the coach, supporters, colleagues and teammates. Unable to sleep, I wondered what I did wrong.

When I was lying in bed and anger, frustration and grieving were in me, it suddenly dawned on me that at this moment I was losing a second time – I was losing with myself. With a theoretically invisible opponent who knows combat techniques completely different than those in the dojo, that it can be attacker and referee at the same time … Then something broke in me, something changed. I understood that I have two opponents – one is an opponent on the mat and the other is in my head.

It was he who criticized me to say that I should give up my future career. It was he who exaggerated the mistakes and treated them as if was the end of the world. He was nervous, attacking and trying to find the guilty. When I listened to this internal critic, I realized that there was one more fight I had to fight – a fight with myself, in which something much bigger than promotion is at stake. It is love for oneself.

I remember smiling at myself and falling asleep. On Sunday morning, after waking up, with my eyes still closed, I analyzed the course of the competition with ease. I stopped where I made a mistake and wondered what I could do better next time. I was calm. I was not irritated. The grudges, tension and jumps of emotions have disappeared. That night something special happened – I accepted that I no longer had to attack myself for the mistakes I made, that I was not a machine that would always function perfectly, but a person who can make mistakes as everyone else.

I understood a lot of important things then:

That mistakes are not made by those who do nothing.
That someone who does nothing will learn nothing.
That if someone thinks that he does not make mistakes, he lives in a world of illusion and self-preservation, or he does not try enough, because he is focusing only on easy things.
That consistent conditioning of specific reactions – whether in sports or in relationships or at work – leads to building positive habits and being better.
That pointing out other mistakes instead of giving them constructive feedback hurts.
That the sooner the conclusions are drawn, the sooner you will be protected against making the same mistake once again.

On Monday I was already back to  training. I started preparations for the next season.

Dear!

This failure was one of my biggest wins. I allowed myself to make mistakes. I did stop to demand impossible perfectionism. I have accepted that I had to lose X times and then win X times. I saw that a person learns and draws more from defeats than from victories. It has come to my mind that the road is more important than the goal and that it does not matter how many times you turn, but how quickly you get up and help others go straight.

Thanks to this, I began to accept constructive criticism. With humility, enjoy the prizes and thanking for my failure, because both did shape my character.

And although I do not like to lose, i can lose. Sometimes in business, when my idea does not work. Sometimes at home when I get angry. Sometimes I write on the blog  I make a mistake or miss something. However, each time I try not to repeat this mistake anymore and every time I think to myself: Ann, relax, it’s okay,  happens to everyone … and I walk forward.

I am aware that I will stumble on this road more than once.
And that’s ok. Really ok.
Remember this 🙂