How do you turn losses into lessons? Before I even read this article I knew I was going to like it. I was told at a young age that losing is a lesson. I knew I was not going to win every time I stepped out on the wrestling mat, but learning has brought me very far. In the article How to Turn Losses into Lessons by Patrick Cohn, he states “Growing pains are the experiences you gain when things don’t go according to plan, when you fall short of what you set out to achieve or when unfortunate circumstances strike at the most inopportune time”. I have learned a lot in my life of the pain I feel when something does not go right. Being able to learn from so many of the mistakes I have made has made me a better being today, and thats thanks to; my growth mindset, parents, friends, coaches, and many other people. When I missed weight at a tournament my freshman year I shocked everyone, and the pain I felt when everyone knew was horrible. I knew what the feeling was like for months, so I did something about it. I learned from what happen as a freshman, and made it a goal of mine to never miss weight again. I still have a lot of wrestling left in my carrier, and do not plan on missing weight again. I liked what Patrick said about learning. Cohn claims, “After each competition, no matter if you win or lose, or how well you performed, find two takeaways that can improve your performance in future competitions”. After wrestling matches I usually never do this, but I think it is a great idea. For the most part after matches I will cool down, and get my breath back. Usually after a break I start to visualize the match I just had and always find a way to criticize myself, and what I should of done instead of something else. Remembering has taught me a lot after matches, and it helps for the future matches to come. Even better way I have learned from me losses is from film. Watching yourself you can learn a lot. Having a coach next to your side makes things even better as they let me know what I should have done instead. Having a lot of reps in practices in the situations that you lost in previously can help a lot, and push you toward perfection. Losing can teach you a lot, and that is why I think just like Patrick Cohn that there is a learning lesson behind losses. Losing is never fun. Having to wrestle my best fried in high school was already tough. We were both ranked number one and number two in the state. the match was heated the first time and I lost. I was devastated, but with my coaches at practice working with me every day tell the state finals made me a lot better. I had learned from the loss to my friend, and did things differently, and came out a state champ. Learning from losses has taught me many things, and I think it will do the same too many others.
Author: alexdlloyd
Final Blog Chapter 5
Accountability through self evaluation. Learn to look in the mirror every day. What does that mean? In any sport or even during the day awareness is key to how you go on through your day. Being aware of your situations can go far wether it is; sports, school, work, exercise. The way that you do things can cause different outcomes, so being aware is very important in life. Tom Bartow is a very highly and skilled coach goes on, and talks about performance evaluations. They consist of three components; “What is being done well, what needs to be improved, and how improvements will be made”. People usually asses themselves as a perfectionist. This means that when something happens they “expected” that to happen, but when you fall short of something you beat yourself up about it. Performance is the only way to become perfect at something. Learn from what has happened, and make it better. Tom states “Performance evaluations force individuals to (1) give themselves credit where credit is due and (2) relentlessly search for improvement”. People who credit themselves for the hard work they have put in actually improve their likelihood of continuing hard work, and positivity in their life. Looking at the things you need to work on, and improve on also works with performance evaluation. When you need to fix something you learn how to respond to it, and make it better for next time. Tom goes on and says “Conversely, if you can shift your evaluation to lock your mind on the improvements needed, then those improvements will be much more likely to occur. Finding the answer to something hard is a great feeling, but learning from those failed attempts feels even better.
Evaluation: The making of a judgement about the amount, number, or value os something; assessment
Performance: An act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. The action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Awareness: The ability to know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. More broadly, it is the state of being conscious of something.
Accountability: The fact or condition of being accountable; responsibility.
Success: The accomplishment of an aim or purpose. The attainment of popularity or profit. A person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity.
Tom Bartow being born into a family of hall a fame coaches knew he had his work cut out for him. Being a coach of that caliber means there was a lot of hard work, dedication, sacrifice, and accountability. Everyone is going to have problems in life, and no one is perfect. Fighting through those problems in life with a performance evaluation mentality will go far. Knowing that you will fail at many things gives us a head start on how we can improve. Improvement in life will lead you in the right direction, and a happy life. Repetition is key to an athlete to become great. The more work you put in in life the better it will be, but do it with a positive attitude.
Final Blog reflection
As a big goodbye to the second semester of 2019 I am going to talk about my experiences, and how my semester went ass far as writing. Talking about where I was most confident, and where I was the weakest. How the whole writhing blogs thing went, and what I am going to do with this experience.
1. “What sucks about living in a stressful situation that I made for my self is i’m putting the urgent stuff aside and doing things that I do not need to do. Every one has done this before and everyone knows what it feels like to be behind. It sucks. If I want to get passed that I need to Start prioritizing my product goals, and my process goals. Jim talks about fear of failure or fear of rejection. I think that fear and failure are both good, they both have a learning experience behind them. I have learned a lot from failure, with wrestling, school, and being a friend. In my opinion if you embrace the failure that have gone through and prevail from it. There will be a lot of things that you will learn from it. We find psychological tendency to procrastinate so we do not have to face those tendencies. I need to work on getting better with procrastination and getting better on getting things done.” I chose this part of the blog as I need more improvement on it because I wasn’t feeling strong about how this paragraph was laid out. I also need to improve on how I prioritize things in life.
2. “This article helps me to visualize what I want to do with my life and how hard I am willing to work. I have set a good set of goals and visualizing about them is part of the process to becoming great, which is my purpose in life. If I were to grade myself on how I am doing with my goals and visualizing the rest of my life, I would say I still need to do some work. Every now and then I will wake up at 8:00am but its not everyday and need to work on it so I can start my day early. I talked about some of the distractions that I was going to come across and I already hit a road block and working around it”. I think I improved in my mentor blogs. There is a lot to take away from athletes that talk about their greatness, and how you can improve your own situations in life.
3. “Nowadays you can go online and see your friends posting pictures, and most of the time there might be a filter or two in the photo its self . Technology has come a long way since the 1900s. I tend to think people look better without filters but who am I to make that decision for someone. People of younger generations are blooming online with filters everywhere to try to show people that they are “pretty” or “hot” when in fact it’s not really who they are. I liked the chapter overall and thought there was some good things in it. Filters are being used everyday millions of times, I would say a lot more people use filters on snapchat than anything. I have an android and the camera quality sucks so I usually do add in filters to make the picture better, but people still know who I am and my goals”. Letting people know how I feel about how people are taken over by technology has made me more confident in my writing. Often times expressing yourself makes me more confident in how I feel.
4. “I know I am a good student I just hate school in general. So One of my goals is to become a better student. I want to become the best version of myself. I want to get back in shape and wrestle like a god damn tank again. So goal number two is become the best wrestler I can. My father made me into a beast by taking me everywhere to wrestle, and I pretty much just went agains’t what I used to do and got fat. So goal number three would to become the best brother and son that I can. These are my three goals and I will be working to better myself as a student, wrestler, and family man”. This would have to be my proudest moment, and letting people know about me. I told people part of my life, and my struggle. I am proud of that.
5. This course has taught me more about writing and reading. I have learned more about how to apply my readings into a writing. There is still a lot of things I have strengthen to become a better writer. Reading and writhing has not been my strength, and I plan on getting better by applying my learnings from this class. Reflecting off of other classmates writing has taught me a lot, and how I can do what they have done to make my writing better.
1. https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/alexlloyd.home.blog/142
2. https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/alexlloyd.home.blog/113
3. https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/alexlloyd.home.blog/72
4. https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/alexlloyd.home.blog/75
Final blog week 3 blog 2
As a summary of the first blog and chapter four. The chapter talked a lot about how to prioritize your goals and how people work to make things better for their own goals. Talking about how we procrastinate and how we like to do the unimportant things before the urgent things. Everyone has been there and know that it is hard to climb the hole that we bury ourselves in when we do unimportant things. I have been there a lot of times and made my way back. Talking about fear of failure. This made me think a lot about my past experiences and what happened. I have done a lot of things that have not been good for myself in school. I have learned a lot from my past and still learning to make my self better.
In chapter four they asked me about three things I would like to do weekly for fun. The first thing I want to do weekly for fun, is to wrestle, and have a fun getting better. The second thing I want to do weekly for fun, is to play football at least twice a week. The third thing I want to do weekly, is to watch a couple movies that I would like, and show to other people. The third thing I want to do weekly, is run with a friend at least three times a week, so I can get in better shape and better summer body…. If you know what I mean. The next thing they ask me to do. What are three things you currently do weekly that should go on your “not to do list”. The first thing I want to put on my not to do list, is to stop drinking when I know I should not. The second thing I want to put on my not to do list weekly, is to not procrastinate every week when I am doing homework and other things. the third thing I want to put on my not to do list weekly, is not put things aside when I should be focusing on things that are important. The third thing chapter four asked me to do. What are three things I currently do weekly at home that should go on my not to do list. The first thing on my not to do list weekly at home, is to not fight with my brothers. It may be a tough task since they both like to make me upset, but I can do it. The second thing I want to put on my not to do list at home weekly, is to not keep white lies going. Lying is not good and never gets you anywhere. The third thing I want to put on my not to do list at home weekly, is not be so spacious from my friends and family. I like to be on my own. Im lone wolf as Alan would say from the hangover. I want to be more involved with my friends, and family.
Final week 3 blog 1
Prioritizing Priorities, What does that mean? Jim Steiner had set goals for his life and prioritized them that he could accomplish them. It took him a very long time but if you were to ask him what he is up to now, he would say “He is one of the top sports agents in the country”. Jim for 20 years thought about his career and family. One thing I thought was cool that he said ” Don’t chase the money. Money won’t make you successful. Chase success; that will make you successful”. Money is great to have, but a lot of people say money can’t buy happiness. I totally agree. When you are happy with your family that is total happiness no matter how much money you have. If you buy everything you will continue to buy things to make your self happier, like I said money can’t buy happiness. Jim made goals for him self to make things better with his family like going to one dance lesson a day, and golf at least three days a week just to get better at his own goals. I have set goals for my self as well as Jim did. I did not make assigned things to do like Jim did with golf and dance lessons. Jim also prioritized his process goals. Jim says something about Prioritize The Priorities ” If you want to achieve your product goals and live your vision of self image, process goal completion must be the priority each and every day”.
In another chapter Jim says that we can come up with many different reasons why we do not do the most important things every day, It is because we are allowing ourselves to be distracted. Right now I am getting distracted everyday that comes closer to being done with school. This has happened a lot of times before in my times as a student. Because I allow myself to get distracted, I am allowing my self to live a stressful part of my life. What sucks about living in a stressful situation that I made for my self is i’m putting the urgent stuff aside and doing things that I do not need to do. Every one has done this before and everyone knows what it feels like to be behind. It sucks. If I want to get passed that I need to Start prioritizing my product goals, and my process goals. Jim talks about fear of failure or fear of rejection. I think that fear and failure are both good, they both have a learning experience behind them. I have learned a lot from failure, with wrestling, school, and being a friend. In my opinion if you embrace the failure that have gone through and prevail from it. There will be a lot of things that you will learn from it. We find psychological tendency to procrastinate so we do not have to face those tendencies. I need to work on getting better with procrastination and getting better on getting things done.
Mentor blog number 3
http://www.feedspot.com/?dadi=1#feed/fof_fo_r__f_4851441/article/5142960619?dd=431152160255725
Student success is very important in school. Being a student athlete makes things harder in a way. But what does it really take to be a successful student. What I really liked about this little article, it taught me a couple of things. I will take time to perfect the different ways to be more successful as a student, but some of the tips are very helpful. Motivation and hard work go hand and hand. They both rely on one another. To be successful you need to be motivated by something. Motivation goes a long way. The adrenaline that you get when you are actually working towards your goals and what you want. Motivation can do a lot of things to the body and will make you work hard towards something. When it come to school like the article talks about I don’t have that much motivation to do much. All that is because researchers think that our motivation for school is intrinsic. I have never really been good at the whole school thing but I am motivated to to see what my future will be like. Finding motivation to do something for school sometimes is hard for me to do. Even though I have a lot riding on me to be great, the motivation is hard to find sometimes. I would like to put it in the same category as wrestling. Especially when a wrestler is cutting weight and need to lose an extra two pounds to make weight. They may be exhausted from all the cutting weight they have done but still two pounds over. Finding the motivation to go outside and run in 95 degree weather with sweats on all day can be very tough. There has been many times where I would look in the mirror and want to quit cutting and just give up. There has been times where I would think to myself “Why do I need to be here in class, and do school” but there is always something that motivates people to keep moving forward. Motivation may be hard to find but when you do get some motivation in you, you can do incredible things. What I liked as well from this article, The author said “achievement can in turn boost motivation”. I believe this to be very true. When you achieve something there is always a set higher that you will want to be at and work towards. Living in a life with high expectations, I already know I have to do amazing things. I have high expectations in the wrestling world, but not as much high expectations in the school. I need to improve as a student so from now on I will be setting high goals for myself in school. You can’t really raise low expectation up too high. Always have high expectations and work to improve on those to have even better goals for the future. I also need to develop a sense of purpose towards learning. If I am going to be in class I might as well get the best out of it, and learn.
Final blog 2 chapter 3
To reiterate what chapter three talked about. This chapter was about goal setting and how we accomplish those goals and how certain athletes work to accomplish their goals. Not many people have goals and even less wright them down and try to do something about them. One thing the author said that stood out to me and to this day I still do is “without keeping score, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to be accountable to just how well you are doing”. To this day I am still a very competitive person and always keep score. If someone is not I am, and always trying to be better than the person who I am going up against. For each of my three priorities in life I will talk about the product goal, for each product goals I will have three process goals. For those that don’t know what a product goal is I will tell you. A product goals are result oriented and are potentially attainable within the next 12 months. And process goals focus on what it will take in a daily basis to achieve the product goals.
My first priority in life is to be a better student in the class room. The product goal is to have a GPA of 3.40 or higher. The three process goals I will do each day, one I will check each day to see if I have homework due. Number two, I will turn in all my homework on time and not miss another assignment the rest of the year. Number three I will make sure to talk to the teacher about help when I need it and apologize every time I miss class or anything else I have missed.
My second priority in life is to become the best wrestler that I can. The product goal of that is to win a national championship and a team championship. My three process goals will be, number one I will get my weight back down to a weight where I know I can dominate and be in shape. Number two process goal will be to develop leadership goals to make the actual team a TEAM that can work with each other and make each other better. The third process goal will be to not make lazy decisions during practice, for example like not finishing my shots and staying on my knees. I need to work up to my feet every time I take a shot.
My third priority is to be a better family man. The product goal will be to improve my relationship with my family. Right now on a scale of 1-10 I am probably a 6 and I want to get to a 10. The process goals to get there would be, one I will be more honest with my family and no more lies even if they are little white lies. Number two I will get a new phone and stay in contact with them, and talk about new things and what we could do as a family. Number three would be to be there for all of them in times of crises. Take care of them like they have taken care of me.
I will tell two people my process and product goals in life because I can trust them and they will help me get to where I need to be. The two people I will tell are Travis Rutt my wrestling coach and protege, and the second will be my father.
Final blog Number 3
This week the chapter I was assigned to read was chapter 3 and this chapter was called “The process of achievement”. This chapter was a little longer than the others but it made a lot of sense. It talked about goals and how they really work, if you are doing the right things. One of the quotes that Latricia uses in this chapter was about a coach that was really big on goals. I have a connection towards her since my coaches are big on goals as well. In high school they always pushed me to be great and set goals that would make me a better man. If you do everything right when you set your goals and achieve them the feeling is amazing. Latricia says later on in the article that “you can’t simply divorce accomplishment” this I liked a lot since it is true. Once you accomplish a goal you know that you can accomplish anything. What made me curious is why only 20% of our population has goals and less than ten percent take time to write them down. I told and wrote down my priorities in life and later in this article Latricia tells us that you need to set goals to help prioritize whats important. I have a lot of things that are important to me and with the goals I made and if I keep working to improve myself the things that are most important will happen.
Goal- The object of a person’s ambition or effort, an aim or desired result.
Accomplishment- Something that has been achieved successfully. The successful achievement of a task, an activity that a person can do well typically as a result of study or practice.
Infrequency- The characteristic of being frequent.
Accountability- The fact or condition of being accountable, responsibility.
Process- A series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. Perform a series mechanical and chemical operations on something in order to change or preserve it.
I personally think that this chapter will help me a lot with how I set goals and work to improve on my set goals. I have never had anything against setting goals, I truly think that of someone works hard enough and work to accomplish their goals they will get a great feeling of satisfaction. The chapter also talk about obstacles to effective goal setting. It talks about infrequency, Under accountability, and paradox. These are everyday things that we face not only as athletes but people as well. We only think about the end goal or end result and we get carried away and set our bar low. There will always be obstacles in our way to try and accomplish something, we have to prevale and do things the hard way sometimes. Take it one day at a time. Knowing what happened to the guys that were being tested on their goals I now know that I can do a lot better in setting my own goals and in the way I try and accomplish them. Any obstacle coming my way will be beaten and I will come out on top.
Mentor blog #2
I was given another mentor blog, but this one was about mental toughness. This little article is actually a very good one. It has a lot of very skilled athletes quoting about mental toughness and how they work through it. I thought this went really well with what I am doing as a final project. This ties in very well with my goals, my purpose, and my priorities. One of the best quotes from this little article came from Michael Jordan. He says that relaxing in a big situation or moment is better than getting ahead of yourself and thinking about different outcome. That goes really well with my wrestling and my goals. If I think too much about something when I am wrestling I feel a lot less confident when I am wrestling. And the same things go with my goals, if I think too far ahead with my life and visualization things might go down the wrong path and it’s due to the fact that I may be over thinking things. The other really good quote I saw came form Steph Curry, he says that its good to be nervous and anxious but he uses all those feelings towards his advantage and knows that he will perform because of these feelings.
This article helps me to visualize what I want to do with my life and how hard I am willing to work. I have set a good set of goals and visualizing about them is part of the process to becoming great, which is my purpose in life. If I were to grade myself on how I am doing with my goals and visualizing the rest of my life, I would say I still need to do some work. Every now and then I will wake up at 8:00am but its not everyday and need to work on it so I can start my day early. I talked about some of the distractions that I was going to come across and I already hit a road block and working around it. I recently went to Mankato for a street festival. At first I wasn’t going to go but I didn’t visualize about what could happen. When I got there I realized this was taking me away from my goals and priorities. I need to visualize more about some of the outcomes that could happen and start thinking about what I really need to do with my life. Getting my weight down could be better as well. I can tell I’m not wrestling well and performing because of all the extra weight I have on my body. If I want to become great I need to feel good about my body. Doing 100 sit ups and push is actually going well and my abs are finally starting to come back. As far as school is going I am doing a lot better and staying on track with class. Class is probably where I improved the most as far as goals and I will continue to do so.
All of this has to do with mental toughness. I originally thought I was pretty strong mentally but after grading myself on how I am doing with my goals. I can now see clearly that I have work to do and a lot of things that I can change to become a better version of myself.
Final blog week 2 post 2
Chapter two talked about self image and how you view the rest of your life. It was a good read and learned something to help me out with how I view myself and the rest of my life. The very first blog I did for the final blogs talked about my goals and purpose in life. My First goal in life is to be a better student in life. My second goal in life is to live my life to my full potential. My third goal in life is to have no regrets and look at some decisions in a positive way and how to improve on them. All the chapter I will be reading and doing blogs on will have something to do with my goals in life and how I reflect on them. This will also have something to do with my purpose in life and my purpose was inspired by and old wrestling coach. This coach was an olympic silver medalist and he always talked about being great and wanting to be great, because of that my purpose in life is to be great. All my goals also reflect of me being great and how I live my life.
The vision I have of myself goes far in the way that I visualize it. I will wake up everyday and look in the mirror like most people do and tell myself the purpose I have in my life and goals. I want to vision my future in the best way possible. I want to grow up to be a better student, I picture myself going to class everyday not upset but ready to learn something and wanting to better myself in the class room. With doing good in the classroom it will effect the way I wrestle. With wrestling I picture myself getting back down to the weight I should be at and feeling good about myself. I will be working out harder and actually caring about how I feel with my body. Going into every workout feeling good about it and not sluggish and not wanting to practice but to embrace the grind and be happy about getting better. I hope to grow up a great father of kids and and great family. I hope to create hope for kids around me and hope they can learn something from my life. I hope to create a vision of myself that parents and kids look up to me and go to me for help and answers in life. I want to live up to my purpose and the priorities I have set for myself.
I will be waking up at 8:00am and setting alarms to wake up and tell myself the purpose in life that I have and priorities. Even when I am mad or upset I want to visualize like Ben Newman did and think about how I want to live my life. I want myself to benefit from this experience and hope that other people will do something like this as well. I want to help people create their own version of themselves and help them to live the life that they want and help them to live up to their purpose.
Lloyd's Weekly 