I try to read a great deal in order to think more broadly. And I try to read things outside of my ordinary realm of interests in order to have challenges to think differently. I know that one of the keys to creativity and innovation is to hang out with people different than you are. We almost never get new ideas hanging out with people who think just like we do. Since I cannot always have coffee or a meal with different kinds of people, the easiest thing to do is to read something by people like this. It is amazing how vast the possibilities are.
One such piece I recently looked at was the commencement address at Barnard College by Abby Wambach, famous women’s soccer player who is now retired from the sport. Of course, I don’t personally know Wambach, but I do know about her. I watched her play many times. With just a little effort, you can find out about her. Born in 1980, Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, as well as played on an American team that won the World Cup. In the soccer world, that is as good as it gets. She is the highest goal scorer on our USA national team. She had an amazing career.
If you read more about her life---past and present---you begin to understand why she told the graduating women at Barnard what she told them. In effect, I think Wambach was giving them the advice she probably could have used at that same age for herself. She speaks out of experience. And her experience has blossomed into wisdom, which she shares. Her speech is too long, with too much content, to use all of it. Toward the end of her speech, she offers four rules, as she calls them. I might call them tidbits of wisdom. The first gem is to make failure your fuel.
Once you know something of her autobiography, you are not surprised that this is the first rule. She has failed. Who among us has not failed. To Wambach’s credit, she has learned how to transform failure into the fuel for a positive future. This is a good lesson for all of us to learn. I think it fits perfectly into the basic message of Christianity---and other major religious traditions. Nobody is perfect; now what? Wambach’s advice is simple: make your failures into fuel for the future.
Let’s listen to parts of her speech. Her opening line in this section is important. “Here’s something the best athletes understand, but seems like a hard concept for non-athletes to grasp. Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.” Fascinatingly, she talks about the “gift of failure.” Most of us surely don’t see failure in that guise. Avoid failure at all costs is probably the mantra of most folks. And if you fail, hide it, pretend and reject. To the contrary, says Abby. See it as gift. Let’s read on.
Her advice continues. “Listen: Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be POWERED by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on. You gotta learn to make failure your fuel.” There is her rule: make failure your fuel. Easy words to read, but difficult to put into practice. The key to taking her advice is probably offered in her first line. Failure is not something we need be ashamed of. That does not seem normal. Particularly for all of us perfectionists, it is absurd! But that’s the point. She is not counseling that we rush out and do dumb things or fail intentionally. But when we do, recognize shame does not make anything better. Get past the shame and see the failure as fuel. Make it the first step to get better or be different.
She then shares a story about Mia Hamm. Hamm is in my mind still the most famous women soccer athlete. Wambach tells about visiting Hamm when Wambach was still a young girl. As Wambach narrates the encounter in the locker room, the thing that most stood out was a picture hanging on the wall. Wambach teases us when she says, “You might guess it was a picture of their last big win, of them standing on a podium accepting gold medals—but it wasn’t. It was a picture of their longtime rival—the Norwegian national team—celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup.” But for Wambach, the lesson was different. She comments, “In that locker room, I learned that in order to become my very best—on the pitch and off—I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power. Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.”
Clearly, she has those young female graduates in mind, but also all women. As a man, I also can take it to hear. Wambach declares, “Women, listen to me. We must embrace failure as our fuel instead of accepting it as our destruction.” It is easy for me to image any spiritual sage offering the same insight. Listen to me. When someone wise speaks, we should listen. Embrace failure. Make something of it.
Don’t let failure destroy us. But it is also true that Abby Wambach did not let failure define her and determine her fate. Failure is fuel to transformation. Failure can lead to conversion---to a new way of life. That seems quite spiritual to me.
One such piece I recently looked at was the commencement address at Barnard College by Abby Wambach, famous women’s soccer player who is now retired from the sport. Of course, I don’t personally know Wambach, but I do know about her. I watched her play many times. With just a little effort, you can find out about her. Born in 1980, Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, as well as played on an American team that won the World Cup. In the soccer world, that is as good as it gets. She is the highest goal scorer on our USA national team. She had an amazing career.
If you read more about her life---past and present---you begin to understand why she told the graduating women at Barnard what she told them. In effect, I think Wambach was giving them the advice she probably could have used at that same age for herself. She speaks out of experience. And her experience has blossomed into wisdom, which she shares. Her speech is too long, with too much content, to use all of it. Toward the end of her speech, she offers four rules, as she calls them. I might call them tidbits of wisdom. The first gem is to make failure your fuel.
Once you know something of her autobiography, you are not surprised that this is the first rule. She has failed. Who among us has not failed. To Wambach’s credit, she has learned how to transform failure into the fuel for a positive future. This is a good lesson for all of us to learn. I think it fits perfectly into the basic message of Christianity---and other major religious traditions. Nobody is perfect; now what? Wambach’s advice is simple: make your failures into fuel for the future.
Let’s listen to parts of her speech. Her opening line in this section is important. “Here’s something the best athletes understand, but seems like a hard concept for non-athletes to grasp. Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.” Fascinatingly, she talks about the “gift of failure.” Most of us surely don’t see failure in that guise. Avoid failure at all costs is probably the mantra of most folks. And if you fail, hide it, pretend and reject. To the contrary, says Abby. See it as gift. Let’s read on.
Her advice continues. “Listen: Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be POWERED by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on. You gotta learn to make failure your fuel.” There is her rule: make failure your fuel. Easy words to read, but difficult to put into practice. The key to taking her advice is probably offered in her first line. Failure is not something we need be ashamed of. That does not seem normal. Particularly for all of us perfectionists, it is absurd! But that’s the point. She is not counseling that we rush out and do dumb things or fail intentionally. But when we do, recognize shame does not make anything better. Get past the shame and see the failure as fuel. Make it the first step to get better or be different.
She then shares a story about Mia Hamm. Hamm is in my mind still the most famous women soccer athlete. Wambach tells about visiting Hamm when Wambach was still a young girl. As Wambach narrates the encounter in the locker room, the thing that most stood out was a picture hanging on the wall. Wambach teases us when she says, “You might guess it was a picture of their last big win, of them standing on a podium accepting gold medals—but it wasn’t. It was a picture of their longtime rival—the Norwegian national team—celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup.” But for Wambach, the lesson was different. She comments, “In that locker room, I learned that in order to become my very best—on the pitch and off—I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power. Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.”
Clearly, she has those young female graduates in mind, but also all women. As a man, I also can take it to hear. Wambach declares, “Women, listen to me. We must embrace failure as our fuel instead of accepting it as our destruction.” It is easy for me to image any spiritual sage offering the same insight. Listen to me. When someone wise speaks, we should listen. Embrace failure. Make something of it.
Don’t let failure destroy us. But it is also true that Abby Wambach did not let failure define her and determine her fate. Failure is fuel to transformation. Failure can lead to conversion---to a new way of life. That seems quite spiritual to me.
Comments
Post a Comment