ACCEPTING FAILURE? LESSONS FROM LeBRON

If you’re good at accepting failure, it means one thing:

You tried, given it your best, and it wasn’t enough.

You’ve done it, I’ve done it.

If you haven’t done it, it’s coming.

Accept failure to get better, and who doesn’t want to get better?

The problem with failure is the questions that follow.

Did you really try? Why didn’t you try harder?

Are you sure that was your best effort?

In the sporting world none of it matters once the clock runs out.

One person calls “SCOREBOARD,” and the others can see what it says.

Playing high school football on a bad team with low moral made for plenty of occasions to see that scoreboard going the other way.

The problem was what to do to get better?

The school solved the problem by firing the coach and hiring a new guy who took the Bulldogs further than ever.

But that was after I graduated.

For the rest of my life I’ve worked to accept failure as a part of improving.

The work includes many of the same questions from those football seasons.

Do I try hard enough? Would I do better if I helped others do better?

 

Help For Accepting Failure

LeBron James got help by playing against some of the best basketball players in the history of the sport.

And he got better, better than ever. Some say he’s the best ever.

What makes him different than any other superstar?

He’s got some kind of motivation.

Instead of hitting the cruise button on his fabulous career, he keeps loading up for more.

And he includes his family along the way.

For all he has done for his sport, he’s done more for showing how he is as a dad.

For all he’s done as a dad, he’s done more for showing how he is as a husband.

There’s a meme out there listing all of LeBron’s accomplishments as an NBA player.

One wife, one mother to his kids. No scandals, no police record.

Yes, I’m getting my information from a meme I can’t find, but who doesn’t trust a blogger for the correct history?

 

What Makes LeBron An Icon?

While I’m not some jock-sniffer looking to break a big story, or make something up that sounds close enough, I do respect their work.

Sports writers do their work and I do mine; mine is a self-imposed job description:

No half-assed bullshit; no ‘gotcha’ moments. Fair enough?

My goal is adding to what you already know, improving the context for better understanding.

There’s protector LeBron with his daughter with a comment on the latest presidential election.

“We don’t need their help.”

That’s the message, but not a good one for accepting failure.

Sports failure and social failure are not the same thing.

In sports failure we get to put on our game face and try again next year.

Social failure is a beatdown on top of a beatdown for people who already feel beaten down.

It gives the ‘winners’ a chance to dance and preen and drink those liberal tears.

Scoreboard gives them that.

The part I like about the LeBron quote of “protect you with everything I have and more,” is the And More part.

My prediction for ‘And More:’

One party is going to follow their leader across a line too far, and they’ll need help making a course correction.

How many young people will stay on message with a man who can’t stay on message?

Whatever that message becomes, whoever plants that message, will need help.

What happens when folks cheer for canceled Obamacare, but fret when they don’t have their Affordable Care Act insurance?

People followed the advice of former president Bush and fell victim to the predatory housing loans and pleaded for help to save their homes.

They need the kind of help a nation provides its citizens.

The LeBron kind of people who don’t need anyone’s help are few and far between.

It’s the regular people who will feel it.

For every strutting incel man showing why they are the way they are, caring moms off the screen are trying their hardest to make their best family.

Those are the moms and dads, those are the kids, the schools, the clinics, the daycare, that keep a family whole.

They are the grass-root Americans of the future.

Who is stepping up for them? LeBron can’t do it all.