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1 Artical
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2 Notes on&nbs...
1 Whether you’re an athlete, a musician, an artist, or a hardworking(勤奋的) student, you probably don’t like to fail — but failing might be the best thing that ever happened to you.
You learn about your strengths and weaknesses.
2 No one is perfect. Tiger Woods doesn’t win every golf tournament(锦标赛) he enters. LeBron James doesn’t make every basketball shot he takes. But one reason that both are elite(出类拔萃的) athletes is that each has learned how to benefit from failure. You don’t have to be all-time great to do this, either. Madi Carleton, 14, of Waterbury, Connecticut, is a competitive swimmer. Her coach once made her sit out a race because her times weren’t fast enough. “I wanted so much to be a part of it — to be racing,” she says. “I also knew I couldn’t. I wasn’t good enough.”
3 After the race, Madi had a decision to make: keep swimming, even though she wasn’t the best, or quit. She decided to stick it out, and now she is swimming races like her friends are. She’s even earned a few medals. “When you don’t have automatic success, you learn to appreciate every success more because you had to work so hard to earn it,” she says.
4 Cody went through a similar experience once he discovered that he wasn’t as good a soccer(足球) player as he thought he was. “The struggle I went through made me want to work harder,” he says. “No matter how talented you are, you can always improve in sports, and that carries over into everyday life too.”
5 Cody took advantage of his time on the bench to watch his more skilled(有技能的) and experienced teammates play the game. He worked to better his game, and by the time he was a junior, he had improved so much that he was named captain of his nationally(全国性地) ranked team. He is now a senior and is being recruited to play soccer for several colleges.
You learn to separate your self-worth from how good — or bad — you are at something.
6 If you base your value just on whether you win or lose, you’ll never be happy. Why? Winning is always temporary because there is always another competition(竞赛) or challenge around the corner waiting for you. If all that matters to you is winning, you’ll end up exhausting yourself trying to come out on top in everything you do. “If your stance(态度) is ‘If I don’t win, then I’m not good enough,’ then you’re saying 100 percent of your worth is wrapped up in this one tournament or test or competition,” says Dr. Mike Dow, a psychologist in Los Angeles who works with teenagers. “That’s not healthy or realistic.”
7 Tori Bowden, 18, of St. Charles, Missouri, learned this the hard way. She was a straight-A student in math until her sophomore year in high school when, for the first time in her life, math became difficult. Unable to cope with that challenge, Tori shut down and stopped doing her homework. As a result, she failed math. “I had to go to summer school and repeat a math class,” Tori says. “I really regret it now.”
You learn to have realistic goals and expectations.
8 Once you accept that not winning at something isn’t the end of your world, you can get on with the business of living your life and learning from it. In the long run, this is invaluable(非常宝贵的), some experts even say that a teen who experiences losing is more likely to accept constructive criticism and have a good work ethic — both of which will come in handy when you go to college or get a job.
9 Through failure, Cody, Madi, and Tori all learned the value of hard work, and that skill will help them throughout their lives. In college or in the workplace, they and every other teenager will need a good work ethic to handle the responsibilities of earning a higher degree and working a full-time job.
10 So the next time you lose, whether it’s on an important test or a big competition, try to think about the big picture. “What would your 25-year-old self say to your 16-year-old self about losing?” Dow asks. “Your future self will probably tell you that it isn’t the end of the world.”
