As a special education teacher, law student, and marathon runner, I have always been devastated by failure and any time I did not perform up to my expectations. When I was in high school, I thought I was a failure every time I ran a bad race. If I ran a poor race (which was somewhat often), I would spend all day thinking about it, and even all weekend after thinking about it. Because I took running so seriously, I would spend the whole day before the race nervous that I was going to fail.
One example of when my anxiety crippled me as a runner was a track meet in eighth grade. When I was in eighth grade, I was the two mile runner on my team, which was the longest distance event that could have been run. I was the fastest two mile runner of the two or three people who decided to do it, as no other middle school runner wanted to run the two mile since the sprints were deemed more appealing. I would win races by whole minutes by virtue of no one else wanting to do it. I ran somewhere in the 12 minutes, which was alright for a middle schooler.
However, there was one race where the other runner on the other team was faster than me. He wasn’t a lot better, and I could ideally run and keep up with him. It was one of the last races of the day. My teammates hyped up the matchup, but I was nervous to the point of shaking all meet, thinking about this race. I didn’t want to feel the pain of pushing myself to the wall against this runner who was better than me. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of my friends. I didn’t want to disappoint myself or my coach.
20 minutes before the race went off, I told my coach I couldn’t run. My stomach hurt. I didn’t run, and the other guy ran alone for about 11 minutes, so it was clear he would have probably beaten me handily.
But I felt conflicted that I didn’t run. Did my stomach actually hurt? Yes. It was probably from the anxiety of the race. But did it hurt to the point where I couldn’t race at all? Probably not.
I don’t linger on this instance often, but just point to it as one example, among many, where I resorted to catastrophic, all-or-nothing thinking, and got in my own way mentally. Over the 14 years since, there would be plenty of other examples of this, and it’s something I am trying to work on, especially in escalated and emotional states.
In my freshman year of college, my personal record in the 5k was a 16:20 going into the last meet of the season. In the championship meet, I was running the 10k. I felt great during most of the first half of the race. I ran with my teammate, shared the lead, and we were not in any contention to win because some of the other runners in the race were just better, but we were running our best races possible. I did not pay any attention to the time or the splits for that first half.
However, as we came through the 5k, a teammate yelled the split: 16:20. I just ran my personal best in the 5k midway through the 10k.
Instantly, I slowed down significantly and started feeling terrible. I started panicking internally about how hard the rest of the race was going to be and how hard it was going to feel, given how fast we had gone out. Rationally, this panic made sense, but I was in the race and had to commit, trust myself, and not look back. But here I was, second-guessing myself and not thinking I was a much better runner than I was the month before I had run that personal best. The rest of the race would be a very painful collapse, where I ran a 17:37 5k and a 33:57 overall 10k.
Multiple teammates and my coach recognized something I didn’t. The fact that I looked as good and relaxed as I did, running a personal best halfway through the race, meant I was a lot more talented and had a lot more potential than I was able to show before. I had a lot more in the tank than I had shown all year.
But I had significant self-doubt and mental hurdles I needed to work through. I was someone who could not step up to the moment because I got in my own way. I look back on that moment and wonder: why did learning that I ran my personal best midway through the race lead to such a mental failure? Why was I getting in my own way? Why was I so scared?
. . .
I am a much more mature runner now. I love to compete, and I welcome being in races where I am not the best runner by any stretch of the imagination. If I ran a personal best but came in last place, it was a good day. If it was a bad race and I executed my race and competed, then it was a good day. If the conditions didn’t allow for a good time and I competed, it was a good day. Heck, I am even becoming mature enough to realize it was just a good day when I tried and did the best I could, even if I executed poorly. I know some things are just meant to be hard, that not every day is going to be a personal best day. On my days I don’t race, including easy days and workouts, I am holding back so I can give it my absolute best on days I need to be at 100%.
It took a long time to get here — not only to execute my best on a given day as a runner, but to do it in life as well when there’s an impending deadline or urgent situation. I went from a choker who shied away from high-pressure situations to a thriver in the years since I decided not to run that eighth grade race because of stomach pain.
But I sometimes do look back and think about whether I could have been in a better position than I am now, and look back sometimes thinking I was too soft, thinking I was a coward, not only as a runner, but in different areas of my professional, academic, and personal life.
I think about the nights I was so nervous about an exam the next day I couldn’t sleep. I think about the various times I pulled all nighters instead of just getting a good night’s sleep because I was nervous, and then did poorly on the exam because I wasn’t mentally sharp. Although I’m married now, I do think about the various times in high school I liked a girl and was too nervous to talk to them, not because I’m not happy with marriage now, but because of the principle of not tackling something I wanted to do because I was scared.
I think about what could have been had I not always gotten in my own way mentally and self-sabotaged.
I ruminate a lot, particularly when I have more free time. This past month, I have been watching the NBA playoffs, and a clip resurfaced on my social media feed from two years ago. I was in the middle of studying for finals, nervous that I would not execute well on the day of the exams, despite being able to do so the past several years.
It was Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo giving a press conference after his team, which was ranked first going into the playoffs in the conference, lost to the last-ranked team in the conference, the Miami Heat. It was a major upset and disappointment for Giannis and his team.
When Giannis and his team were eliminated, a reporter asked him whether he viewed this disappointment and early exit from the playoffs, in a year his team had championship aspirations, as a failure.
Giannis responded in a very emotional and memorable answer:
This perspective hit very close to home for me. I think of all those moments where I was too scared, too nervous, where I choked and collapsed in the big moments as failures. It took a very long time for me to become more confident, to have a healthier perspective that at least I tried and did the best I could. Giannis’s words helped me reframe that when I did my best, when I swung as hard and threw everything against the wall as I could despite the challenges, it was not a failure. It was a success not only because I tried, but also because I moved in the right direction for future endeavors.
On face value, this part of the press conference may not seem to apply to me as a runner focused on individual success, but the fact is that some days are not your day. There are so many days when I don’t feel good and am not at my best as a runner, and I still just adapt to what I feel on the day. As I get more competitive and become better as a runner, the people I run against are going to get better too. A lot of people are going to be better. I am going to lose — a lot, because in a race, there can only be one winner. But each time I lose and don’t meet my expectations, it is a part of the process and I will keep working, keep trying, and try to tinker with my strategy, not only as a runner, but in life.
. . .
These words just really resonated with me, because I still often have an all-or-nothing perspective when it comes to success or failure. In law school, I think of a grade on a test or paper that is anything else than an A as a failure. As a special education teacher, I think of every student who dropped out of school, didn’t graduate, or whose behavior I struggled to manage as a student I failed to teach. I only speak more in depth about my experience as a runner because I used to so often see success or failure as a runner as conflated with success in life, which was not always the best perspective.
In the NBA playoffs, in this second round of the 2024–2025 season, I am witnessing something I have never witnessed before in watching professional basketball. Teams are losing by 20 or more points in the third quarter, and then coming back, winning, and shocking everyone in the process. The series favorites of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, and Oklahoma City Thunder have all fallen victim to comebacks where they were winning by at least 20 points.
That’s just a reminder to me to always keep swinging, even when all the cards are stacked against me. In my first year of law school, my class started a recreational basketball team. Our manager accidentally entered us into the competitive league instead of the recreational league, so we played very skilled, tall, and competitive graduate student basketball players instead of casual players. We were blown out in the two games we played, once where we scored 38 points and the other team scored almost 100, and once 72–38. Despite being outgunned and outmatched, I was going to compete and play as hard as I could until the end of each game, because I did not want to go home and say I didn’t try.
As long as I did my best, gave my best effort, and did everything I could to help the people around me within my capacity, it was not a failure. Although I, like anyone, needs breaks and has off days, a failure is only a day when I didn’t give my best and didn’t try. But perhaps I need to work on seeing those days as failures, too. It took a really long time to build the resilience and confidence I have today, so, like Giannis said, those moments for me, and for many of us, were not failures, but steps to success.
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This post was previously published on Ryan Fan’s blog.
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