Fuck the Easy Way, Find the Challenge

TL;DR Do hard stuff that you will fail miserably at. It’s a great way to learn.

I just got back from playing in a soccer game in which my team was destroyed. The score was 7-2. Yea, destroyed.

The league I play in is a recreational one, and we’re all recreational players. From time to time, we play regular season games against very competitive teams that wipe the field with us. Today was one of those days.

We agree to play these types of teams because games against them help make us better. We get destroyed, and leave with our egos flattened and we learn. How the hell does that work?

Brendan’s article explains it well. You need to be challenged in order to grow. In everything you do.

I see accolades as nice to haves (as in: your life will suck without them because you will feel worthless!), but you need to be in those “I just got destroyed” situations so you can get better (yea, I’m trying hard not to quote Alfred from Batman Begins: “Why do we fall Bruce? So we can learn how to pick ourselves up”. best. movie. ever.)

Biggest thing we learned in our shellacking tonight? How to play defense. We let in 5 goals in the first half, and only 2 in the second half. We stepped up our defense and figured out how to slow down a great team. Think of each half as an A/B test today. That’s right, soccer can be nerdy too.

Come playoff time, we’ll play the “B” style of defense. We likely wouldn’t have gotten that insight if we were on the other side of that 7-2 result today.