Dealing With Failure
I once coached a kid who was a perfectionist. She was the prototypical oldest child. Type A personality, high achiever, and super competitive. What made her so good was that she really, really wanted to do the best she could for herself and others. She wanted to compete, she was super coachable, and she wanted to please. All of those characteristics also manifested itself in one negative way: she struggled mentally when she wasn't able to master something quickly. It started out simple and harmless, but her inability to handle adversity began to get worse and worse. I started to notice that with every mistake, she would look immediately to me. Then she started to look at her parents after each mistake. I set up a meeting with her parents to talk about this. My biggest goal for her was to learn how to play through mistakes and learn how to deal with adversity appropriately. This was a life skill that we needed her to learn. The last thing that we wanted was sports, and ou...