时间：2022-08-18 10:55:58
Cody Wilkins sat on the bench—yet again—while his soccer teammates ran up and down the field scoring goals. It had been a tough year of high school for the Chicago teen. Even though Cody was the only freshman on varsity1, he almost never got to play, and he felt like a failure.
“Before high school, it was like I was swimming in a little pond, and then I suddenly landed in Lake Michigan,” Cody says.“My confidence was shot2. I thought I didn’t deserve to be on the varsity team. I thought maybe I wasn’t as good as my coaches thought I was during tryouts3. I thought maybe I should quit.”
Any teen who has ever come in second, fifth, thirteenth, or even last place can probably relate to4 how Cody felt. But even though losing can seem devastating5, it can actually be good for you.
You learn about your strengths and weaknesses.
No one is perfect. Tiger Woods6 doesn’t win every golf tournament7 he enters. LeBron James8 doesn’t make every basketball shot he takes. But one reason that both are elite 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 out9 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.”
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 out10, and now she is swimming races like her friends are. She’s even earned a few medals.“When you don’t have automatic11 success, you learn to appreciate every success more because you had to work so hard to earn it,” she says.
Cody went through a similar experience once he discovered that he wasn’t as good a soccer 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.”
Cody took advantage of his time on the bench to watch his more skilled and experienced teammates play the game. He worked hard 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 ranked team. He is now a senior and is being recruited12 to play soccer for several colleges.
You learn to separate your self-worth from how good—or bad—you are at something. 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 or challenge around the corner13 waiting for you. If all that matters to you is winning, you’ll end up exhausting yourself trying to come out on top14 in everything you do.“If your stance15 is‘if I don’t win, then I’m not good enough,’ then you’re saying 100 percent of your worth is wrapped up in16 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.”