Crash and Burn

During our recent vacation, our son Brock wanted to learn how to surf. This is one of the few sports that I’ve never tried, so I couldn’t really help him. So we registered Brock for a two-hour group lesson with a few other folks. The first 15-20 minutes of the lesson was on the shore and served to be the most interesting part of this activity.

What do you think the instructor taught these novice surfers first?

How to crash.

Apparently there is an art form to wiping out on the waves. There is a right way to fall and a wrong way. Turns out there are several “don'ts” when it comes to falling off your board. With all the time the teacher spent on the way to fail correctly, it got me thinking…..

How often do we START with how to handle adversity before we talk about success?

Both in life and in business, we should probably take a page out of the surfer playbook and spend some time talking about how to handle challenges on the front end. We of course always need to define what “victory” looks like, however game planning for the difficult times in advance can be helpful.

So the question of the day is this…..

What challenges can you foresee in the future, that you can map out a game plan for today?

Inevitably we are all going to have that wipeout experience. Work on how to handle those epic fails now rather than later. When they come, we will all be ready. Crash yes, burn no.

Have a great week ahead!