I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
- Michael Jordan
I love thinking about basketball and the lessons I’ve learned from it, because I really believe that there are so many important concepts to be learned from the game. One of the lessons I’ve learned comes from one of the most basic (and most fun!) actions in the game: shooting the basketball. Everyone likes shooting the ball - hell, even people who aren’t good at it will still feel inspired enough to take a shot now and then. They might know the odds are against them and they might be terrible shooters, but something about the act of shooting just grabs a hold of them and they’re unable to resist. But poor shooters aren’t the focus of this column - the act of shooting is. What is it about shooting that is so magical? Is it the ’swish’ sound the ball makes when it falls perfectly through the hoop? Is it the beauty of physics - the arc in the air, a result of the perfect harmony between the ball and our hands? Or is the answer more psychological? Is it simply the act of shooting, of trying? Is it about the chance we’ll succeed, and the small victory we derive from each shot that goes in?
Perhaps its all these things, but I want to focus on the psychological aspects of shooting. Every time you shoot the ball, you are attempting something. It could be a layup, it could be a foul shot, it could be a 3-point shot. Whatever the case is, the shot can end in two ways: success or failure. There is no in-between - it either goes in or it doesn’t. You either made it or you didn’t. In some ways, this is exactly the kind of feedback we need. You get instant feedback on your attempts, and you now have the power to make adjustments as necessary the next time around. Even if you miss, you know its not the end of the world and that you’ll get another chance to try again, and to improve. You know that if you shoot enough, the odds are that you’ll make one eventually. Shooting is proactive - you’re attempting to reach a concrete, simple goal and your success or failure lies entirely in your hands and how well you perform.
It’s this kind of action that we need more in life. We need to attempt more, even if that means we fail more. Who do you think will be a better shooter - he who takes 10 shots a day, or he who takes 1000? The best basketball pros can take upwards of 1000 shots daily. Every shot they take gives them more feedback that they can use to adjust the next time around. Missing a shot isn’t the end of the world - they understand that missing, like failure, is just a part of life. The best shooters in the NBA hardly ever average above 50%! But they’re willing to keep shooting even if it means missing more than half of their shots. It’s this kind of attitude that people need to learn to adopt in life. We need to stop thinking of failure as such a bad thing. The more attempts we take, the more we’ll fail, but the more feedback we’ll get which will help us improve our chances the next time around. The most successful people don’t get to where they are by succeeding at everything they do. That’s just now how it works. They get there by going through the fire - by failing more than anyone else, and by learning to move on, keep trying, and get better. Lucky for us, our failure percentage isn’t being calculated every time we shoot and miss! All it takes is one major success for previous failures to be forgotten.