Errors In Baseball

It’s baseball season, and I love it.

The other day I noticed my 8 year old was in the infield when a hit came to him. He scooped it up and absolutely lobed it over the first baseman’s head right at the fence.

What happened next was interesting to me.

He threw his head back in disgust and put his face into the palm of his glove to hide it away.

Hmmmm 8 year old who makes mistakes, and is already learning the behavior to ‘beat yourself up’ over it.

I’ve made a lot of errors in baseball too over the years, on and off the field.

But what do we do when that happens?

Do we behave disgusted with ourselves? Do we make a funny face and laugh about it?

I really had to think about the different ways we can handle mistakes and failures.

In our home we have what we call a #failjar. It is a quart size mason jar with the label ‘Fail Jar’ on it. Anytime someone in our family makes a mistake, fails a test, or have something that doesn’t go our way we put it in the fail jar.

Now I’m not sure what kind of impact this will have on my family. It might have the absolute opposite effect. But I decided to give it a try. And I’ll tell you why.

I want my kids, and mainly I want me to be okay with mistakes.

With my first son (my test kid) I would get so mad when he dropped something and it broke, or when he spilled something (Face in palms here- I should put it in the fail jar!) Anyways, I did it. I’m not sure why. I think it was because I thought he shouldn’t have made mistakes, yeah that definitely is it. So instead of saying, yeah it’s okay buddy. I would get upset, thinking that if I scolded him he wouldn’t do it again. (** Vulnerable moment here me sharing this with you!)

So no wonder, he now scolds himself when he makes a mistake! And listen I am not judging myself, more that I am seeing some repercussions from different interactions and analyzing it in a helpful and compassionate way.

But the truth is when we react this way it effect every other play. We are still “beating ourselves up” when the next hit comes we put ourself at a disadvantage. We are more apt to make MORE MISTAKES because we are so upset with ourself. We make more and more errors and get more and more upset.

I want to be able to make a mistake in life and celebrate it. I want it to really mean nothing to me. Not an “I don’t care” attitude, but that I love myself enough to not determine my worth and thought systems about myself based on how many “errors” I make in my life. I am who I am based on my thoughts about myself.

So Mommas, the next time you or someone in your family makes a mistake… think about how you want to acknowledge it. Let’s set the example for our kids that mistakes are ABSOLUTELY 100% expected, honestly the more we make and learn to adapt and bounce back the more we will learn, grow and rise to the next best version of ourselves. We want to practice making a mistake, learning from it, coping and bouncing back. The more we shame ourselves for messing up, the farther we go down the rabbit hole and the harder it is to get back. Make mistakes, celebrate from them, learn from them so we can spend our energy focusing on the next play. Love you mommas!