Bounce Back

"If you're going to make every game a matter of life or death, you're going to have a lot of problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot." -- Dean Smith

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." - attributed often to Albert Einstein but possibly first written by Rita Mae Brown or the Narcotics Anonymous Handbook

Following the University of Memphis loss to Kansas in the 2008 NCAA basketball championship game, Coach John Calipari wrote Bounce Back: Overcoming Setbacks to Succeed in Business and in Life.  Everyone faces adversity. Coach Calipari's players most commonly are minorities who have grown up poor and overcome difficult circumstances to become elite basketball players. All showed the ability to rebound from defeats, personal and team, to achieve on or off the court. 

Here are a few of his thoughts:

"Pedigree is of little importance to me; it's what you do game to game and season to season that determines what kind of program you will be."

"Remember, your trigger event will impact on others around you, so you need to be strong for them."

"Understand that people will begin assessing you for your next job, relationship, or business deal as soon as they see you are dealing with a pitfall."

"You also begin to understand that you are not going to have just one, two, or three bounce backs in your life. In fact, you're never going to be done transforming yourself, your career, and your relationships."

"You...should assess your performance frequently through the bounce back process...most of all you have to always be honest with yourself."

"In your own bounce back you have to be able to look at your situation objectively..."

"Take stock of what has happened, and be prepared to attack your bounce back with a passion and positive attitude - no matter what."

"Every high achiever has a powerful team of personal advisors to turn to for assistance, advice, and support. In fact, this team is so critical, it pays to begin assembling them early on in your journey...you need to include people who will challenge you and not be afraid to tell you things you don't want to hear."

You get the point. One setback in the midst of an excellent campaign serves not as a crisis or catastrophe, but as a learning opportunity and chance for self-reflection on how to improve individually and collectively. Consider it as an opportunity, like tempering steel makes it more useful.