WEEK OWN IT 13 CONTENT OVERVIEW C COACHES CAPTAINS ATHLETES FAMILY

Create a team Discuss problems Own your Defne what rules, culture that early and often mistakes, so they standards, and celebrates progress to work towards don’t own you. expectations your over perfection. solutions. family has.

OWN IT Nobody likes making mistakes. They’re embarrassing. They’re uncomfortable. They make you confront the fact that you are not perfect.

Missing a shot, fumbling the ball, or crossing the fnish line a few seconds behind your opponent feels awful when it happens. Getting a low grade on an essay or giving a wrong answer in class can be embarrassing. Mistakes tend to punch your feelings of self-worth in the gut.

But remember this: Making a mistake doesn’t make you any less worthy of success. A mistake is not the end of the line. Even if it’s a really big mistake, with seemingly devastating consequences, it’s not the end of the world.

Regardless of the mistake, there is always an opportunity to learn from it. That’s why you can’t let fear of making a mistake hold you back from trying.

Something powerful happens when, instead of shying away from the fear of making mistakes, you embrace mistakes as a welcomed teacher. Mistakes and the discomfort that comes with them can be one of the most powerful tools for your life, if you let them. But, if all you do is run away from situations where you might make a mistake, you’ll never grow.

Learn to own your mistakes, so they don’t own you. When you make a mistake, your frst instinct is probably to avoid all mention of it and to pretend it never happened. Don’t do this!

Talk about it with your friends, coaches, or parents. Write about it in a journal or just on a scrap of paper. Look at the events that led up to it and fgure out what you could have done differently. Make your mistakes work for you.

When you let go of the fear and negative power of making mistakes, there’s no limit to what you can do.

2Words Character Development • Season 1 • Week 13 WEEK OWN IT FOR COACHES

13OWN IT: FOR COACHES The fear of mistakes can be paralyzing. We’ve all had athletes who have future-tripped themselves right out of success by obsessing over what will be if they get it wrong. Will I be punished, embarrassed...worse? Fear of letting their coach, team, family or themselves down can absolutely crush teenagers.

Owning (and even welcoming) mistakes isn’t about letting standards fall by the wayside. It’s about exploiting the underutilized tool of mistakes. Understand this: mistakes are going to happen; it’s a given. What isn’t a given is learning from mistakes. That has to be coached.

If our athletes aren’t rewarded for responding well to mistakes (i.e., growing and learning from them), they’re going to stop making them—with great consequence. If failing at trying something new is punished or ridiculed, they will stop trying to do anything new. That in turn means they’ll stop improving and start to stagnate. We need to fnd ways to let our athletes know that it’s ok to make the right mistakes.

For example, say an athlete decides to try a new move that doesn’t work out for them in a game. They might decide never to try that again for fear of further failure. But if it was a good idea, just lacking something in the execution, we should encourage them to practice it more and teach it to others. This helps them learn from the mistake and lets them actively contribute to the team.

We have an opportunity to cultivate the mindset that the right mistakes can propel their learning, not paralyze their lives. Let’s work to create a culture where our athletes understand that the fear of mistakes is unnecessary.

THIS WEEK, BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR: QUOTES OF THE DAY: 1. An opportunity to foster a culture of improvement. MONDAY: When a player makes a mistake, encourage them to “The best players learn from their mistakes... think about the mechanics of what caused it. Then, try to That’s what separates the leader on the court brainstorm a solution. Make it a collaborative effort that from the pack.” - Pau Gasol focuses more on what can be gained from this mistake than what was lost by it being made in the frst place. TUESDAY: 2. An opportunity to catch a player doing something “Too many of us are not living our dreams right. Watch out for a chance to congratulate a player on because we are living our fears.” doing something correctly—whether she’s done this thing - Tony Robbins the right way a thousand times or if it’s the frst time without WEDNESDAY: stumbling. “When you own your mistakes, your mistakes don’t own you.” - Coach Mackey 3. An opportunity to ask “Why?” When a mistake is made, try to get to the root of the problem with the 3 Whys THURSDAY: method. Take this scenario for example: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert Kennedy » Why did you miss that free throw? FRIDAY: • I wasn’t paying attention to my aim. “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try » Why weren’t you paying attention? again. Fail again. Fail Better.” • I was trying to catch my breath. - Samuel Beckett » Why were you that out of breath? • I need to work more on my endurance.

2Words Character Development • Season 1 • Week 13 WEEK OWN IT FOR CAPTAINS

13OWN IT: FOR CAPTAINS Responsibility and fault are not synonyms.

If your teammate drops the game-winning out in the bottom of the 9th, that isn’t your fault (i.e. you C weren’t the cause), but you, as the leader, do have responsibility for your team and their results.

That probably doesn’t sound fair, but leading a team means accepting responsibility for how that team performs, whether that’s on the court now, or in the boardroom later in life. As a leader, you share the wins, and you share the losses.

Everyone has a role to play in the success or failure of the team, but as a leader, you have a unique role to play. You are the frst to be celebrated in victory, and the frst to be blamed in defeat: if you want to call the shots, you have to be willing to take the shots. When struggles, problems, or mistakes are made—regardless of whose fault it is—you are responsible.

In diffcult times, leaders look beyond the mistake, problem, or trial and map out a path to a solution. Going back to the baseball example: How do you think the teammate who missed the catch (or dropped the ball) feels right now? How do you think the rest of your team feels about the loss?

As a leader, you’re the visionary for your team. You have to understand what your teammates are experiencing to help them move past it and prepare to snag the win the next time. In this case, accepting responsibility for the loss means being the agent of positivity, especially for the player who made a mistake. It also means fnding solutions to avoid a similar situation in the future.

Everyone on the team has responsibilities. Accept your responsibility as a team leader, even if it’s not your fault.

/// CAPTAINS’ LOG /// “LEADERS ALWAYS LEAD”

On the left side of a blank sheet of paper, write all the things related to your sport that are your responsibility alone, not as a team captain, just as a team member.

One the right side, write all the things that are someone else’s responsibility.

Which responsibilities do the two lists have in common? Or, put another way, what are some responsibilities that all team members share? Write them in the center.

Now, think about your responsibilities as a team captain and leader. How do your responsibilities as a team captain differ from your responsibilities as a team member?

Why is it important for a leader to assume responsibility for mistakes even if it wasn’t “their fault”?

2Words Character Development • Season 1 • Week 13 WEEK OWN IT FOR ATHLETES

OWN IT: FOR ATHLETES 13There are two types of mistakes: effort mistakes and coachable mistakes.

Effort mistakes come from things like not putting your all into practice and preparation, not studying enough for the mid-term, or general procrastinating. Effort mistakes occur when you do not put in your best effort or do not give your all to the goal.

Effort mistakes are unacceptable. I repeat: effort mistakes are unacceptable. If you’re not making your mistakes at 1000 mph, you’re doing it wrong. That doesn’t mean you should be reckless with your decisions. After all, not thinking something through can also be an effort mistake.

If you are giving it your all and trying your best, your efforts are not to blame for the mistake, which means you can learn from it. That’s a coachable mistake. Coachable mistakes come from being “in process”, and are a powerful tool in your development.

You are learning all the time. Think about learning a subject like Chemistry. You start out kind of knowing what chemicals like oxygen and CO2 are from your personal experience of breathing, but now you’re being asked to learn about the chemical composition at a microscopic level. No one expects you to memorize and retain all the information presented in the textbook without a lot of studying, application of the knowledge, and—that’s right—mistakes.

You’re going to give a wrong answer in front of the class. You’re going to miss a few questions on the homework assignment. Something will go wrong with an experiment.

But every time you make one of those mistakes, you gain a deeper understanding of the knowledge that you got wrong the frst time. You shouldn’t be ashamed of making coachable mistakes. Those mistakes are some of the best learning tools available to you, if you accept them and learn from them.

Athlete’s Exercise: Think about a recent mistake you made. It can be something that happened on the feld or court or in the classroom. Keep it in mind as you answer these questions: 1. Was it an effort mistake or a coachable mistake? Explain why.

2. Did you own the mistake? When it happened, did you take responsibility for the mistake or did you pass it off on someone or something else?

3. Did you take the events personally? Was your self-talk, “I AM a mistake” or “I MADE a mistake”? How can you separate your personal identity from the mistake?

4. What caused this mistake? Don’t settle for the frst or most obvious answer, and don’t just make excuses. Dig deep to the root cause.

5. Did you handle the mistake as well as you could have? If the answer is no, write out what you can do next time to make the next mistake your best mistake.

2Words Character Development • Season 1 • Week 13 WEEK OWN IT FOR FAMILY

13OWN IT: FOR FAMILY We’ve all made mistakes. Hopefully we also learned something from them. Even knowing the educational beneft of mistakes, we hate to see our kids make them. Often, we want to spare them any kind of pain or embarrassment. We would much rather have them learn from the mistakes of others instead.

The unpleasant truth is: Our kids will make mistakes. Everyone does. But we can teach them how to analyze their mistakes through the consequences of violating our family’s rules, standards, and expectations.

So, what’s the difference between these terms?

• Rules are the things that tell our kids what they can and cannot get away with. They are unyielding. Our kids understand that if they break the rules, there will be consequences. • Standards are usually less overt than rules, and they tend to pertain to everyone in the family, not just the kids. It might seem like a subtle distinction, but standards are more likely to be met with disappointment than punishment. They could be something as mundane as “We won’t leave dirty dishes in the sink” or as intangible as “We will always treat each other with respect.” • Expectations are the most intangible. They are how we expect our kids to behave. Things like “I expect you to work hard” or “I expect you to stay out of trouble at school.” They’re guidelines for how we hope our kids will live.

We have rules and standards for our families to help our kids avoid making what can often be painful mistakes. They may not understand why we have those expectations, though. As a parent, it’s tempting to use the “because I said so” card to explain our expectations. But, if we really want to help our children make fewer mistakes in life, it’s better to indulge that eternal curiosity and explain the reasons behind our rules, standards, and expectations.

/// BEST 5 /// THE BEST FIVE MINUTES OF THE WEEK

Make a list of your family’s rules.

Then, make a list of your family’s standards.

What are the expectations that you have for your kids? What are some of the expectations that they have for you? Make a third list with these expectations.

How does everyone feel about your family’s rules, standards, and expectations? Are there any on the list that your kids don’t understand?

Write down the most important answers from the three lists, and put them somewhere in the house where everyone will see them regularly. At the end of a week, talk about any differences you’ve noticed since placing the rules, standards, and expectations in a prominent place.

2Words Character Development • Season 1 • Week 13