So. In this one mentorship program, we talk a lot about failures and personal growth as a clinician. Emma Jack, from @pressplayphysio on IG, had a talk about herself and how her perfectionist attitude after years of work led to immense burnout and an eventual break from the practice. But now she’s back and urging students and young clinicians to realize they can live life another way. Which is — embracing failures, valuing our past failures, and building up our resilience with failures. I guess I never thought about resilience like a muscle — I mean, I’m not going to aggressively seek out failures and force them to happen, but I need to be more accepting of them and do more things that might make them happen, like trying much harder and taking more risks.
But then I started thinking about what failure really is. I do the lesson of the week while I’m doing laundry in my apartment facilities, so I was standing there, scribbling furiously in my notebook while it thundered outside and my clothes tumbled around. The assignment was to write down a failure, what it taught us, who we met, etc. But I’ve talked about my grad school troubles enough, I’m tired of using them as my failures — yes, almost missing out on grad school the second time around was tough, but I’ve learned as much as I can from them. I had to dig a little deeper and pick some failures that weren’t necessarily as exciting, but they definitely broke me down.
I’ll summarize them — during grad school I conducted some rehabs that I felt like I had failed. I just didn’t feel like I did a good enough job, I didn’t ask enough questions, I didn’t try enough. When in reality, I know that I tried as hard as I could have, cared as much as I could have — but it just didn’t go perfectly. I didn’t hurt anyone, but they could have been better. I learned that I don’t know everything, I learned that I need to give athletes more information and to be more honest with them. I learned about being the bigger person and what kind of mentor/manager I want to be. I learned about teamwork and leaning on other clinicians, and then not being afraid to ask questions — I was not afraid to ask, but I was unwilling to sometimes because I just dreaded the answer. But SO WHAT — I need to do better.
I learned a lot from a “failure” that others may not have ranked as a failure. I think people expect failures to be these huge, monumental crushing moments, when really — any failure, no matter how small, can make waves for someone. They are what the person experiencing them makes of it. I’ve also learned not to look too hard for past failures. In the sense that you don’t need to make mountains out of molehills and break yourself down that hard, but you also can’t ignore the ones staring you in the face. It’s all about a balance.
And here’s something we don’t talk about either — what is failure? When does it become failure or just life happening to you? When I ran over about 12–15 nails and got a flat tire, that wasn’t my fault (I just happened to drive on a road literally named Industrial Road, which is incredibly ironic). But my inability to react well — that was the failure, I guess. But then again, what do you do in humidity that you forgot how to breathe in, in a new city you’ve never been in, at least 10 hours from anyone you know, with your entire life packed in your car, headed to your final destination? It was…not my best moment. But it was also really hard.
So it led me to think about different types of failures. There’s one kind where you do as much as you can and what you’re going for doesn’t happen. The hardest part is that you don’t know if it’s because you weren’t good enough, or if someone was better (which someone told me once — there is always someone better than you, it’s just how the world works), or if it was just by chance. For the Type A person that I am, sometimes I just want to know. But sometimes that doesn’t really happen. Which is quite unfortunate but just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.
Another type of failure is where you poorly react to a situation that couldn’t be controlled. Granted, that rating of “poorly” is very subjective, but maybe you reacted in a way you weren’t proud of. And maybe you weren’t proud of your initial reaction, but maybe you did a 180 afterwards and got your life together again. I do that — I give myself a 24 hour rule. I get that first day to react emotionally, as I usually do, but then I’ve got to get my sh** together! I find that if I don’t get rid of the emotions and immediately try to problem solve or bounce back, I can’t do it fully.
And ok, I guess my next failure is that I can’t think of another type of failure. Or that my title is awkward but that sort of fits me, ya know? I’m trying to keep these short and sweet. But thinking about failures this way reminds me that each person’s experiences are different. It also tells me that bad things that happen to you randomly, like driving over a rail of nails and waking up to a flat tire — are not a failure, they’re just random. And will give you moments to laugh about in the future. So fall forward, fail away, whatever you wanna say — you’ll be okay.
