When You Make a Mistake

Raise your hand if you’ve never made a mistake in a game.

Nobody? That’s what I thought.

Every player on every team at every level makes mistakes. The best players in the world miss shots, drop balls, make wrong decisions. It’s part of the game. The question isn’t whether you’ll make mistakes. It’s what you do in the five seconds after you make one.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

The righteous person falls seven times and gets back up. Not once. Seven times. The Bible is saying that falling down — making mistakes, failing, getting it wrong — is normal. What matters is that you get back up.

So here’s what the next five seconds after a mistake look like for a good player. First, you don’t panic. Take a breath. Second, you don’t beat yourself up. Saying mean things to yourself in your head doesn’t help — it just makes the next play harder. Third, you get your head up and get ready for the next one.

That’s it. Breathe, reset, go again.

Here’s the thing about mistakes: every player who has ever done something great first had to fail at it a bunch of times. The mistake is part of how you get better. If you never tried anything hard enough to fail at it, you wouldn’t be growing.

Validate whatever they say. Some kids shut down, some get angry, some cry. All of those are normal. The teaching is about what comes next, not about suppressing the initial reaction.