THEY BEAT THEMSELVES

Today in the United States, the college football season kicked off (began)! There are dozens of games, many of which are being televised or covered on the radio. Earlier today, I listened to a pair of play by play commentators discuss a game that had just ended. One of the commentators went into a long explanation as to why the one team had been defeated. He said that they had, "beat themselves." They hadn't executed plays the way they had practiced them. They didn't stay focused. They underestimated their opponent and had not prepared as well as they usually do. He continued with several examples and then repeated, "they beat themselves." I began thinking about those times we fail at a challenge or loose an opportunity or don't succeed at a significant goal because we "beat ourselves." Often it's not the condition of the workplace or the size of the goal or the attitude of the other person that had caused us to fall short of our desired outcome. It's often not doing what we know we should do to be prepared for the situation. It is also not doing things the way we had planned, or doing something the easy way without gathering the information needed to know what needs to be done. When elements like these are part of our experience, we are not being defeated, we have created a situation where we "beat ourselves." We can learn from our successful and not so successful experiences. Lets do what we know we should do. Ultimately there is no failure, only feedback. Sometimes that feedback will inform us that we were not defeated, it will reveal, "they beat themselves."