#58 - You MUST Learn To Bounce Back
One of the toughest times in swimming is when you physically and mentally prepare yourself for a big meet, only to find that you don't achieve your goals there. (Or even worse, having a meet where you didn't even go close to achieving your dreams).
The first thing to do is know that EVERY swimmer goes through this. Not some swimmers - every single swimmer. Defeat is not something new, and you did not invent it! Even the most successful swimmers go through this, and they are the ones who have learned the powerful art of 'bouncing back' from the jaws of defeat to achieve ultimate victory. But more on that in a moment.
Secondly, it's not the meet itself which will have any affect your future success, but your REACTION to that meet which is the most important. This means you must not 'dwell' negatively upon the meet, but extract whatever positives you can from it, LEARN from the experience, and then, most importantly, MOVE ON to new goals.
The trap lies in dwelling upon the past - instead you must move forward, and focusing upon greater triumphs. This is the key to success, and I call this 'bouncing back' - the quality of all great champions. But there's no point moving forward blindly. You must find out what you need to know from those swims, and then arm yourself with this information to return better, hungrier and more powerful than before. Successful swimmers bounce back from failures and convert it into future victories.
So don't fall into the self-pity trap or begin to mentally torture yourself like most swimmers do - get on with it and DO something about it. Talk to your coach, examine what went wrong, plan a new strategy - and then move forward positively. This will ensure that you will have your day. Use setbacks to make yourself stronger, and eventually you will be indestructible. Once again - use setbacks to make yourself even stronger!!
When a great swimmer 'fails', this can actually strike FEAR into their competitors who know (only too well) that this swimmer will come back faster, harder and stronger than ever before. This is what the greatest athletes do - they convert failures into future victories, and using those 'failures' along the way to gather more information, which toughens them up with stronger mental and physical 'ammunition'.
So learn to bounce back - it's one of the most powerful qualities you can ever possess.
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