“The Leadership Perspective” is a series of articles designed to assist millennials and emerging leaders with navigating difficult situations. Each week, successful leaders provide targeted, actionable advice to enhance your perspective and improve your leadership skills.
Today’s article features mindset coach, lululemon Men’s Brand Ambassador, and professional baseball player Zach Penprase.
People around the world are experiencing serious disruption in their professional, personal, and emotional lives as result of this ongoing pandemic. At the heart of it all, everyone is trying to navigate unprecedented levels of uncertainty. The unknown is uncomfortable and so it is natural to feel frustrated, irritated, overwhelmed, anxious and unsure of how to move forward. So, how can we deal with uncertainty and perhaps even create opportunity from it?
We can address this question with a baseball story in which uncertainty is represented in a routine, individual struggle. Zach explains, “every day is uncertain in the minor leagues because you don’t know if you’re going to play, what the coaches are going to do with you, and then there is always the possibility of getting released – fired – from the sport you love playing.”
The key to embracing uncertainty is developing the strength to deal with it, and dealing with it means that you will fail. The game of baseball is inherently a game of failure: it is the only business in which a professional can continuously fail seven times out of ten and still be considered an All-Star. For ten years, Zach went to the field every day and he failed. Then, he failed when he was released from the Dodgers organization. He failed when he retired without making it to the Big Leagues. He failed when he grew to resent the game he loved.
It is important to note that failure creates emotion. Upon retirement, it was frustration alongside resentment, resistance, depression, fear and more for Zach. His ability to identify these emotions and embrace them allowed him to use them as a tool for growth. He adds, “be okay with the frustration and feel it… listen to that energy and let it guide you”.
Through his resiliency in handling the emotion that is attached to uncertainty, Zach created the motto “faith in failure”. Instead of understanding failure as destructive, he chooses to have faith in it. He explains, “failure gives us lessons and helps us grow… be excited to fail. Run toward the failure. The more you fail, the better you get and the quicker you reach success. Have faith that failure will give you the answers in uncertain times”.
With “faith in failure”, Zach is able to shift his mindset so that he can deal with uncertainty more efficiently. His ability to re-frame challenging situations, “mind-shifting” as he calls it, allowed him to come out of retirement and return to the game he loves – this time, to compete in the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games.
From Zach’s journey, we can apply the lessons learned from a game of uncertainty and failure to embrace the unknown in our own lives:
1. Failure is dealing with uncertainty. It is a sign that you are moving in the right direction. Use it as a source of discovery and feedback.
2. Allow yourself to feel the emotions of uncertainty. Sit with them for a few hours or a few days before asking yourself what you can learn from them.
3. “Mind-shifting”, or framing, allows you to more easily deal with challenges and uncertainty. Instead of retreating from the unknown, find opportunity within it.
Using these concepts as a guideline, you can learn to embrace uncertainty and emerge stronger, inspired, and more successful because of it.
Maggie Glasser is the founder and owner of Maggie Glasser Enterprises, a boutique consulting business that provides strategic guidance in sales, business development, and client services to hospitality businesses and event agencies. She writes about topics that provide business professionals with actionable advice to improve their skills and advance in their careers.
