I am not a Catholic; however, I have long believed that honest confession is good for the soul.
This week’s perspective is a bit of a confession.
A recent experience has forced me to confront something about myself that I wasn’t expecting. It made me think back to my years as a coach and teacher, and it brought me face to face with one of my own personal demons.
I hate hypocrisy. I truly despise it. Few character traits bother me more than someone saying one thing while living another. So imagine my discomfort when I suddenly had to look in the mirror and wonder if I was guilty of the very thing I can’t stand.
To be human is to live in a constant battle between virtue and vice. Most days we like to think our better angels are winning, but when you discover that one of your own vices may have gotten the upper hand, it’s a deeply uncomfortable feeling.
Recently, I started a new position at Sand Valley. It has been a great move for me personally and professionally. The people I work with are terrific; the work is fulfilling, and I’ve been challenged in valuable ways.
One of those challenges has been technology.
I’m using computers systems and tools that are well outside my comfort zone. At times I feel completely out of my element, and that has led to feelings of concern, worry, and even fear.
Every day I am concerned about making a “catastrophic” mistake. Every day I worry that I’ll click the wrong button and somehow crash the entire system. And every day, somewhere in the back of my mind, I am afraid that my mistakes will expose my incompetence and prove I wasn’t worthy of the opportunity I was given.
Being worried and afraid is not my normal mental state. Facing those feelings has made me think back to my years on the softball field and in the classroom.
How many times did I tell players and students, “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes”?
Hundreds? Thousands?
I preached it constantly because I believed it.
Growth requires failure. Learning requires mistakes. Confidence is built by getting something wrong, correcting it, trying again, and eventually getting it right. It was one of the foundational lessons I hoped my athletes and students would carry with them long after they left my classroom or stepped off the field.
Now, years later, here I am—the one who is afraid to make mistakes.
There’s a certain irony in that, and if not irony, a little personal humiliation.
When I’ve shared these fears with my coworkers, every one of them has offered some version of the same reassurance:
“Chad, there isn’t a mistake here that can’t be fixed.”
That certainly seems true enough. It also happens to be exactly what I spent years trying to convince athletes and students to believe.
One of my coworkers has driven that lesson home even more. She started around the same time as I did and is about the same age as the college athletes I used to coach.
She attacks every new task with enthusiasm. She asks questions without hesitation. She isn’t paralyzed by the possibility of getting something wrong. She shows no signs of being afraid to make a mistake.
One day when I was complimenting her on how well she is doing so quickly in the new job, she smiled and said, “Sometimes you just have to act like you know what you are doing. You know, fake it till you make it.”
I almost fell over laughing at the juxtaposition of her using those words on me.
If she makes a mistake, she fixes it, learns from it, and moves on.
Watching her has been inspiring and a little humbling. In fact, it’s even a little comical.
After spending a lifetime encouraging young people to embrace mistakes as part of learning, I’m now the old guy quietly hoping I don’t make one.
Coming face to face with my own hypocrisy, I even started to wonder if I had been a fraud all those years of coaching and teaching.
But I don’t think I was. I believed every word I told my players and students, and I still believe it now.
The problem wasn’t the lesson. The problem is that human nature is stubborn.
Most of us don’t like looking foolish. We don’t enjoy being wrong. We don’t want to disappoint people. We worry about failing, being judged, or proving we aren’t as capable as others think we are.
That’s true whether you’re sixteen or fifty-four.
Knowing we shouldn’t fear mistakes doesn’t magically erase the fear. It simply reminds us of what’s waiting on the other side of it.
Growth.
Every meaningful skill a person ever learns comes with the frustration of making mistakes. Every worthwhile accomplishment requires getting something wrong before eventually getting it right.
If I allow the fear of making mistakes to keep me from learning this new job, then I stop growing as a person.
And I don’t want that.
So, to every student who hesitated to raise a hand because you were afraid your answer might be wrong, and to every athlete who played a little too cautiously because you didn’t want to make an error, well, I feel you and understand you better today than I ever did back then.
When I told you not to be afraid of making mistakes, I wasn’t pretending it was easy.
I simply knew it was necessary.
Today, I’m learning the very lesson I spent decades trying to teach.
Turns out, old coaches still have things to learn, and that’s a lesson worth learning, or relearning, even at my age.
That’s the perspective this week.
Until next Friday,
Coach T
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