4 Questions When Dealing With Adversity

I have a young daughter that plays soccer. She is pretty good (for a 5-year-old). She scores a lot of goals, and she stops a lot of goals (that is our team mantra - 'score goals, stop goals'). My fear for her as her coach-dad is that she has so much success now that she won't know how to handle adversity when it comes. I don't want her to fail - I want her to win every game that she ever plays! But, if she does happen to lose (we all lose), I want her to be able to handle it.

Last night at soccer practice, she lost in a drill and she started crying. She was playing around and not focused when we were teaching how to do the drill, and it affected the way that she played. It was such a good learning lesson for her, and for me. I learned how she responds to adversity. She learned the importance of paying attention and doing your best. It was a small, teachable moment that hopefully will have a lasting impact.

After practice, I said, "It's not fun losing, right?" She said no, and I told her that is why we have to pay attention and try our best. We don't win everything, but we have to do our best.

We have to learn how to deal with adversity. We have to learn how to deal with setbacks. There is a lesson to be learned in everything.

Here are 4 questions to ask yourself when facing adversity:

1 - What happened?

2 - Why did this happen?

3 - What could I have done differently or better?

4 - What can I do better now?