Replay The Highlight Reel In Your Head

There is beauty in celebrating the hard work, passion, and guts that go into every play, even if you don’t win each time. Setbacks can be constraining or empowering. It is all in how you look at them.

My favorite NCAA March Madness moment, “One Shining Moment,” is a highlight reel dedicated mostly to the 67 teams that didn’t win, including missed shots. Because it wasn’t about missing the shot, it was about the sweat and tears of those teammates who gave it their best. If you are more of a Broadway fan, think of it as one of my favorite lines from Hamilton: “I’m not throwing away my shot.”

Learning your confidence language allows you to replay highlight reels in light of your superpowers, not from a viewpoint of disappointment. We can beat ourselves up over setbacks, or we can view moments of distress in terms of how they made us stronger. Your confidence language gives you an inventory of your strengths and others’ contributions; that insight helps you build compassion for yourself and others. After all, compassion is defined as “a consciousness of another’s ‘distress’ and a desire to alleviate it.”

In other words, compassion is empathy plus action. There’s a negative version of events, and there’s a positive way to rewind the tape every single time. So when you rewind the tape, review it with this newfound compassion and vocabulary, because it will show you how strong you really are. I’m not saying not to have high standards, but rather to look at events with a discerning eye:

• Are there any teachable lessons there?

  
  

• Was there something that you did that demonstrated or tapped into your strengths, even if the result was disappointing?

  
  

• In what ways are you stronger now than before?

Compassion is one of the most powerful tools to take on every day with self-assurance.

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