Quote:
Originally Posted by MysterE
Good morning, FIRSTers.
My main topic today is called dealing with disappointment. This has been one of the best and worst seasons that I've had the privileged to coach. It is my third, and the first season that our team has won no awards and has not been in any eliminations. We got to experience a large dose of disappointment as we watched our robot fail time and time again, and experience the sting of watching other teams walk up to the stage to get every award under the sun.
Secondly, after being invited to go to the World Championship because of the Waitlist this past Friday, we experienced the sting of administrative bureaucracy as we managed to find the funding, the bus, and the hotel in a period of two days and then not be given permission, then given permission, then not given permission again by our administrator. So our season is officially done.
With these things in mind, I bring up this topic. How does your team deal with disappointment? Like it or not, there are countless teams that have to deal with this feeling of loss each year. It comes at regionals, it comes from our community or administration or coaches or mentors or at World Championship - it can come from many different directions. When you've worked as hard as you could and still find that it seems to not be enough, how do you continue on without shutting down for the entire off-season before you dust yourself off?
First - I've learned the value of redirected enthusiasm. While we were not selected to play in the eliminations, a team that worked down the street from us played amazingly well and ended up ranked #1. One of their mentors had been one of our students. So - once the alliances were chosen and I could feel the disappointment from the team, I brought everyone outside and had a discussion. We decided to turn our efforts to cheering on our fellow Baton Rouge team. It was amazing to watch. We were asked questions by a number of other teams. "Why are you cheering so loudly - you aren't on their team." But in some way we were. We found a team to invest in and used our best cheers, our best chants, and our roar of excitement from them. Later we were told that we could be heard across the entire audience.
Second - Never undervalue the benefit of instant refocusing. We all play with gracious professionalism, but in the end, when someone wins and we do not, it is easy to blame ourselves or blame the judges or blame a whole slew of other people. In the end, though, the truth is that someone did something better than we did. We lost the Chairman's Award because another team did some things that we did not.
With that question, we were able to galvanize our team, and instead of leaving wounded, we left motivated.
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In life you will be .500.
Sounds like your post helped you to realize that you still had a valuable season. Adopting and rooting for other teams in the Eliminations is a great exercise.
I have been on teams whose fortunes have risen and fallen. It is not about the Robot etc.... Really.
Losing, like criticism, is the only thing that motivates one to improve.
"Always remain in a state of becoming." ~Buddha