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Sink or Swim, how failure can teach a growth mindset

Updated: Oct 8



Two weeks ago, I swam 2 miles in the serpentine in Hyde Park.


I am currently training for my first 70.3 (Half Ironman) triathlon so have been doing lots of sea swimming as part of it. I am not a fast swimmer by any means but I can keep going and (mostly) enjoy it when I do. I was ready. I confidently bowled up at the Serpentine early, getting swept away with the hype, dancing myself into the middle of the pack to start my swim.

 

When things don’t exactly go to plan…

 

So it was a bit of a shock to my system when within a minute of being in the water, I’d been hit in the face, swallowed a couple of pints of pond water and was starting to feel the panic rising. I couldn’t breathe and no matter what I tried to do it got worse, my head was immediately filled with a mixture of thoughts. Firstly, berating myself – ‘I’ve done this a million times before, I can swim…why can’t I just breathe? you are useless, you’ll never do it…’ to trying to get back on track ‘I can do this, just try to swim a few minutes of breaststroke then retrying crawl again, keep going’. However hard I tried, the same just happened all over again – this was not the plan! Each time my negative self-talk getting worse and proving to myself I was indeed a failure.


Thankfully, eventually I decided to stop thinking about the plan and conceded that I would just swim the whole first mile breaststroke (which is both painfully slow and painful on the old neck!) but eventually my mindset shifted, and I settled into a new rhythm, calmed down and stopped being annoyed at myself. I finally got my breath back and swam the next mile front crawl in rhythm and finished it with a smile of relief. However, despite the fact I did finish (when at the start I wasn’t sure that was possible), I spent the whole journey home grumpy and disappointed with myself.

 

My mind failed me not my body.


That evening when I had recovered, I had a bit more time for reflection and remembered the wise words of Carol Dwek – ‘Failure is just one step close to getting things right’. We all fail at things, it is a part of life. And if we never fail, we never learn and grow. Anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t give up. Being determined is one of my strengths – which thankfully I could draw on when things didn’t go to plan in the moment. So after a chat with my coach (everyone needs a cheerleader in this situation), I immediately signed up to a triathlon the following week with the intention to approach the whole thing with a completely different mindset – this time it was about learning and practice practice practice.


Putting a new mindset hat on makes the biggest difference

 

I worked out what was the issue, I needed to put my competitive perfectionist mindset well away and instead adopt one of growth. Inspired once again by Dwek I knew I had to challenge myself to reframe my thinking…And instead of thinking I’d failed, I told myself ‘I can’t do this, YET’. I spent the next week reading up on all sorts of tips to help me in those moments. Asking anyone with experience and mentally visualising how I might do the same in the race.


Putting learnings from failure into action:

 

I could have just stopped there, but I realised something. It isn’t enough to just tell ourselves we need to learn. We need to take a first step to feel the discomfort and how our mind reacts in the moment so we can coach it to react differently when under pressure.

 

I decided to face my demons head on. So the day before the next race I went down to the sea in my wetsuit and practiced walking calmly SLOWLY into the water and swimming into the choppy waves. The first time my Serpentine experience came back in full force – I pretty much had a panic attack. So, I went out and did the same again. Time and time and time again – I mean I must have looked ridiculous! But I kept going until the panic started edging away and instead, I started noticing that my mind was calm (or even bored – it was getting a little repetitive). Suddenly felt a tiny glimmer of something else…Could it be a sense of achievement?


Rehearsal time with no expectations

 

The race day came and 4.30am the next morning in the torrential rain I tried again (maybe questioning my life choices a little). This was my chance to learn in practice. Rehearsal time with no expectations. I stuck to my new mindset plan… I got there early and went in the sea in the pitch black to test it out – it was dark and choppy – tick!.

 

When the klaxon blew, I fought every bone in my competitive body to walk very slowly into the sea at the back (I was literally the last person to enter the water!) and that is when the growth mindset and rehearsal time came into their own. I swam calmly, I swam my own race and despite the waves crashing around everywhere I actually bloody enjoyed it!!

 

Getting out of the sea I knew I had learnt more about myself in the last week than I have in years. I had put myself to the test and conquered. And not only that, to my surprise I managed to finish first female!


But in my heart of hearts what mattered most was winning my own medal... I conquered my own demons and relearnt how to learn and grow again… I discovered what learning from failure actually meant.


by Carla Cringle, Founder of FizzPopBANG



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