By Ryan Walter /
Question:
Ryan, our team has just been through a difficult losing streak. How do we coaches help players learn resilience? –Jimmy
Answer:
Jimmy I love this word and concept and I learned it early in my life.
I played for the Langley Lords as a 15- and 16-year-old and then at the end of my 16-year-old season I played up in the playoffs for the Kamloops Chiefs of the Western Hockey league. Early in the game, I was driving around a big defenceman and moving in on goal when the defenceman took my skates out from under me with his stick and I slid hard into the goal post. If any of you are as old as I am, you will remember those posts. Why would anyone weld the post solid under the ice? Anyway, my knee hit the post and disintegrated. My friend doctor Smillie explained that the operation was like sewing the old string style mop heads together. Many people wondered if I would be the same player that they had high hopes for after my long operation.
What I love about difficult times is that each of us really only have two options. The first is the pity-party. We all use this option often; it comes with a “why me?” attitude. The second option is to let the difficulties of life turn-up your hungry spirit. This is the attitude that your opposition hates to see in you. As I reflect, I actually think that busting my knee at 16-years-old helped me realize my NHL dream and here’s why: the pain and commitment that I had to muster to rehabilitate that knee increased my desire to be a player and proved to me that I could do it.
During this Christmas season I believe I have found the key attitude to staying resilient, and it can be observed first hand in millions of homes and children’s hearts over the holidays. The key is to be like a kid on Christmas morning—thankful for the gifts you have received and optimistic and excited about the new gifts that are coming your way. Truman Capote says, “failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.” When we take our eyes off of our disappointment and get them focused on all the blessings that we already have and the amazing opportunities that will come our way in the future...then we learn to stay resilient.
“Problems are a normal part of change. Things are changing so abruptly that there are going to be problems you face. So you must look at failure as an event, not as a person. I’m not a failure. Maybe I’ve had a failure or a temporary inconvenience. I’ve had a stumbling block, and the idea is to turn a stumbling block into a stepping stone, and step on it instead of stumble over it. So look at failure as the fertilizer of success.”
Denis Waitley
Denis Waitley articulates well the second key to staying resilient. Failure is not a PERSON; it is an event. Just because our team loses, it doesn’t mean that we are “losers.” This concept is critical to our self-image and to keeping our players hungry. If someone calls you a loser it’s still up to you whether to believe what they say or not. Read this amazing story of two brothers named Winner and Loser Lane:
One son was named Loser, the other Winner.
One became a policeman and was eventually promoted to detective.
The other fell into the life of a small-time crook, racking up at least 31 arrests before being jailed for two years.
But for the brothers Lane it was not a case of their unique names sealing their fates. “I went a totally separate route right from the start,” said Loser Lane, 41, a detective in the South Bronx.
Loser, a star student and athlete, went on scholarship to an elite prep school, on to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and then joined the force.
Winner’s life has gone the other way. Now 44, Winner last month completed a two-year jail sentence for breaking into a car.
He is living in a homeless shelter in upstate New York, shuttling back and forth between it and the city trying to get his life on track.
Why did he commit so many crimes? “It’s just some situations I got in,” Winner said.
Loser said of his brother: “Most of the crimes are minor crimes. He’s just kooky, not a heavy drinker, some domestic violence problems, but was never a heavy drinker, never into drugs...He’s just not all there, I think.”
The story of how Loser got his name is simple. The day he was born, their late father, Robert, asked his daughter what to name the baby. “My dad comes home and asks my oldest sister what to name me and she said, ‘Well, we’ve got a Winner, why don’t we have a Loser?’ And there you go.”
The brothers rarely see each other, though Winner will phone Loser when he is short of money, but they are no longer close. “I’m a cop,” said Loser, who is known as Lou on the job. “And I have a way with me, I don’t tolerate a lot.” The Lane boys ran in the same circles while growing up in public housing in Harlem, where their names never seemed to arouse curiosity or ridicule from the neighborhood kids. “When you’re young you don’t know that it’s a bad name, and by the time you hit grade school, everybody knows you. It was a regular thing,” Loser Lane said.
While Loser’s friends had no problem calling him by his name, his teachers and other adults “couldn’t bring themselves to call me Loser”, so he became Lou.
Imagine your parents naming you “Loser?”
Loser Lane chose to be a winner and there lies the third and greatest key to staying resilient... it’s always our CHOICE.
Ryan’s NEW book is out... Simply the Best... Players on Performing is a great for every player and coach in Canada: http://www.ryanwalter.com/products.asp
Ryan Walter played 15 NHL Seasons and has a Masters Degree in Leadership/Business. He is a leadership expert who speaks to corporations, organizations and hockey associations across North America. For information on booking Ryan or to purchase his programs, motivational books and board game, Trade-Deadline Hockey, or to sign up for Ryan’s weekly free e-newsletter on leadership and team performance…go to www.ryanwalter.com or call 1866 728-3603. |
