As the warriors ended the NBA finals with the loss of an upset against the Cleveland Cavaliers, I step back and look at the effects of falling short from any sport related goal. As an athlete, you go to competitions to compete and give it your all. Granted, your performance in the off-season will be much different than in-season, however, both crucial to your overall development as an athlete. We prepare all year long for that one-week that we battle to see our best results. However this isn’t always the case. No matter whether it’s Steph Curry, Lebron James or a college athlete like myself, we have all fallen short of a sports related goal we have meticulously pursued.

Failure doesn’t feel good at any cost. It’s hard to swallow and hard to continuously maneuver throughout the day with the frustration looming in the back of your head. To give everything you have in practice and perform just shy of what you had hoped for is devastating. Then you start going through every possible list of unfair events you could possibly name: I’ve worked harder than the person next to me that always gets his/her desired goal, I’m more hungry than them, our team is better than theirs, my coach has prepared me more for this, I’ve changed my bad habits just to achieve this, I just can never win...so on and so forth. But as athletes, sometimes we miss the bigger picture.

Yes, sometimes we do fall short of something we’ve trained harder than ever for and that is OK. Steph Curry set records this year in the NBA for his astounding three point shot yet they were defeated in the championship game. Yes, it stings to be faced with the disappointment of coming up short, but failure teaches us quite a lot if not more than winning does. I believe that for every athlete to reach optimal success they must fail over and over again. Failure can set you back, but it makes the drive and the feeling of accomplishment so much greater. In fact, you never know how driven you actually are until you come back from a failure. Participation trophies stop being handed out at young ages for a reason. Defining the winner and loser creates bigger life lessons. Failure isn’t a bad thing, it’s a moment designed for learning.

I’ve had my fair share of failures throughout my years as an athlete. I’ve had the anger, frustration, sadness that comes along with every athlete that experiences failure. But it has shaped me not only to be a better athlete, but a better person. I can step back and look at the bigger picture. What do I need to adjust to take me to the next level? Failing has also taught me humility. If I would have achieved all the goals I have ever set, then what happens when I finally miss a goal? The humility that comes along with failure lets us see the good behind the bad. In addition, the failures that come along with sports make accomplishing goals even more meaningful. My career as an athlete doesn’t stop when I fail, in fact that’s the good thing about sports,they will always be there for me even when I feel like giving up on them.

Now, I know I will never be the best athlete in the world and I know that I will never be the best athlete in the state or at my school, but failure has taught me that life goes on. There is so much more to life than the temporary sadness that comes with failure. If you can confidently say you gave everything you had in that one performance, then look back at your defeat as a learning lesson. You did nothing wrong. In fact, you did everything right. You are weaving your way through the complex course of life, and you don’t always win in life. At the end of the day, we all fail, we are all human, but how we choose to come back from our failures will result in more positive (or negative) changes in our lives.