So you screwed up. 

Guess what? It happens to every athlete in every sport during every stage of their careers. 

So now that we have that established, what you do next, after that mistake or loss, will determine if you will move forward towards future successes or stay stuck in the past, which you cannot change.

We hear it all the time, athletes who cannot get past the mistake they made, ruminating over the loss and beating themselves up for a less-than-stellar performance. 

Here is the BIG problem with ruminating and holding on to mistakes, it sucks your energy dry, detracts your focus, and prevents you from taking advantage of the brand-new opportunities in front of you. 

And it throws you in a state of competing not to lose versus competing to win which is a surefire way to make more mistakes and hurt your future results. 

The first step to removing yourself from a place of rumination and negative self-talk is to allow yourself to feel what you are feeling. It is ok to be angry, frustrated, and feel a rollercoaster of emotions.

But be sure to ask yourself, are these thoughts and feelings that are filling your brain and nervous systems, are they constructive or nonconstructive? Meaning how are they helping you? Are your thoughts and feelings true, like really, really true? Or are they just negative thoughts creeping in that have no real merit? 

In order to stop dwelling on mistakes you have to make a realistic assessment of the situation and abandon any and all false judgments and beliefs.

Additionally, you need to put a time limit on how long you allow yourself to feel this way. Whether that is a solid 15 minutes after an event or the duration of the car ride home, that is all you get. Make a deal with yourself that after that allotted period of time the ruminating is over and left in the past. 

Failure is essential to growth so now let's get growing.

The second step to turning your mistake into future successes is to do success visualization.

You have probably landed that trick before, or succeeded in putting together a solid that landed you on a podium or earned you a top score. Go back and revisit these moments through visualization, when you were in this state of flow that delivered the result you wanted. 

How did your body feel? What were you thinking about or not thinking about? What are the clues and cues you can recall that can help you next time? 

Reviewing our past successes through visualization provides the reminders we mentally, emotionally, and physically need to overcome disappointments and dispel unuseful and untruthful negative self-chatter.

"I made a mistake, it happens to everyone....now what?"  

The third step to help turn mistakes into successes is to examine what you can learn from the mistake or from the loss and how you can build this into your training.

Identify the top three lessons you learned from the day, whether that is from your performance, your preparation (or lack of preparation), or what you learned from your fellow competitors.

Did you take off too late on the wave? Did you land too low in the transition? Did you over or underestimate your speed? 

Do yourself a favor and just don't acknowledge the lessons you learned but write them down. There is power when you take the time to handwrite the lessons you learned and identify what you want and CAN do differently next time.  What do you want to work towards? What steps do you need to take to make that happen? 

Like we said in the beginning, every athlete in every sport during every stage of their career makes mistakes. But it is the ones who heed the above advice that helps move them from living in the past and holding on to the negative to seizing future opportunities and moving them toward greater successes. 

Author: Sue Izzo 

Photo Credit: US Ski & Snowboard