The most valuable lesson I learned from sports

I made it! After years of dedicated training, I successfully completed CPH marathon under three hours yesterday. 2:58:57 to be exact. It has been a dream for years. I am blown away. Could not stop smiling. Forever grateful for being able to experience such event. The feeling of reaching a long-term goal, that I've been working extremely hard for, is amazing.

But the most valuable lesson I learned from sports is... to handle broken dreams. Sports have provided me with multiple opportunities to practice failures. Injuries, cancelled races, damaged equipment. Or just all those races where I gave everything I had, and still failed to move forward. The disappointment can been overwhelming.

Racing is hard, whether it's running, triathlon, or any other sport. Unexpected events will happen along the way, and the result will not always end up where it was supposed to be. But here is the key; It is the same for everyone! Failing is universal. How we react to a failure is however individual. I have always been impressed by athletes, entrepreneurs, and friends who can turn a disappointment into actions. Some people are able to immediately get up, move forward, and find a new door when one closed. This is an invaluable skill. What is the secret to achieving that? Well, I may share my perspective in a later post.

When I started ProblemSolving.se I wanted to take some of that experience into the innovation framework. As ideas are tested during the experimentation phase, it is important to establish a "failure-friendly" environment. When solving problems and innovating you want to quickly let go of a failure and focus on more viable alternatives. "Fail faster, succeed sooner".

My point is this; celebrate success but learn to handle failures. You can't accomplish anything without the possibility of failure.