It is the reality for 99% of teams, coaches, individuals at the end of a season. You lost. By definition, you are a loser. This season we fell into that 99%.

I remember walking to the locker room with the feeling of a brain short circuiting.  It felt like my mind was going into what usually happens after a loss, which is getting pissed off and dissecting it from every possible angle statistically, energetically and strategically. However, this time the neural pathway didn’t want to fire in that way. That feeling of pissed off wouldn’t and didn’t take hold over my emotional state and it left me puzzled. This disruption in my being led me to ask myself a really scary question I wasn’t sure I had or wanted the answer to:

Do I have to be pissed off about a loss in order to be a winner?

Early in my career, as a player and as a coach, I would have said a resounding, “yes”. It’s how I fueled my desire to get back to work after working for a full season only to come up short of my goal. It assisted in fueling my desire and behavior for getting better and starting all over again. It worked, for a little while.

As I reached the locker room door my answer dropped in for me, “Nope”.

I no longer need that emotional shove to “get back in the gym” and it felt like I shed a heavy coat on a hot day. I am connected to what I do, I am confident and I know regardless of the result on the court I will head straight to dissecting it from every possible angle statistically, energetically and strategically, without the pissed off part.

It amazes me that in the time when confidence could be shaken the most, a loss, I was able to experience confidence in a such a sincere way that disrupted my circuitry and leveled me up.

Regardless of why we’ve constructed the patterns we have, you have a say in whether or not they keep firing.