Mistakes are not the enemy of athletic performance. They are the raw material of progress. If you want to grow in your sport, you must face the reality that mistakes are not only inevitable, they are essential. They tell you what needs work, they direct your training focus, and they prepare you for future adversity. In a sense, your training exists for two reasons: to improve upon past mistakes and to prepare for challenges yet to come.
The Process
There’s a simple three-step process I teach athletes for handling mistakes: get the information, forgive yourself, and play on. First, you identify exactly what happened so you can use it to guide your next repetition, training session, or competition. Second, you let go, not by pretending the mistake didn’t matter, but by removing your ego from the event so you can see it clearly and move forward. Finally, you return to the present moment and keep competing, armed with new knowledge rather than weighed down by frustration.
Most athletes are fairly good at that first step. They can spot an error and name it right away. The problem comes when they get stuck there, replaying the mistake in their mind until it overshadows everything else. That lingering weight turns a single moment into a running storyline of self-criticism, and that storyline can derail the rest of their performance.
This process for growth is one I first learned from Dr. Ken Ravizza, someone I had the privilege of knowing personally while growing up. I watched him work with athletes alongside my dad [watch our recent podcast episode here], seeing firsthand how his calm presence and clear communication could turn tense moments into opportunities for growth. Ken was a pioneer in applied sport psychology, working with Olympic athletes, professional baseball players, and countless others. His three-part process, get the information, forgive yourself, and play on, stuck with me, not just as a professional tool, but as a life skill. The emphasis on forgiveness was never about brushing mistakes aside; it was about removing your ego from the event so you could see it clearly and use it productively.
Remove ‘Your-SELF’
Think about how a coach watches an athlete compete. The coach is not personally insulted by a missed shot, a stumble, or a technical error. Instead, they watch with objectivity, gathering information on what worked and what didn’t. They then relay that information to the athlete so adjustments can be made. This is the mindset athletes should strive to adopt for themselves: a coach’s eye turned inward.
Imagine a gymnast who slips off the balance beam. Her coach sees the slip and quickly identifies that the cartwheel leading up to it was slightly off angle. The athlete, however, is lost in a storm of negative and destructive self-talk: “I’m terrible at this. I always mess this up.” Her mind assembles a blooper reel of recent errors, each one compounding her frustration. The same event produced two entirely different reactions—one objective, one emotional. The gymnast’s reaction is common, and what keeps many athletes stuck. By attaching her ego to the mistake, she turns a moment of feedback into a personal judgment.
If she could instead adopt her coach’s perspective, she would notice the same cartwheel angle issue, store that information, and move forward without dragging the emotional baggage along. She would get the information, forgive herself, and play on. That forgiveness is not about minimizing the mistake or excusing poor performance. It’s about separating who you are from what happened so you can work with the facts.
Play On.
The final step, play on, connects directly to something I covered in my recent article, How to Build a Pre-Performance Routine that Works! on the three phases of a pre-performance routine: reset, refocus, ready. Once you have gathered the information and removed the emotional weight of the mistake, you must be able to reset mentally, refocus on the task at hand, and get yourself ready for what comes next. Linking these processes creates a powerful framework for resilience. You deal with the mistake in real time, you learn from it, and you return to a performance-ready state before the next challenge arrives.
Mistakes are a gift when you handle them this way. They tell you exactly where to place your attention. They give you a clear reason to train, a direction for improvement, and a way to prepare for the adversity that inevitably comes in sport. But the gift only matters if you can receive it without getting stuck in your own head.
Here’s a simple action step you can try: In your next practice or competition, when you make a mistake, pause and imagine you are your own coach. Describe the mistake as if you were talking about someone else. Strip out the judgment and focus only on the facts of what happened. Then take a breath, remind yourself that the event is over, and ask, “What’s next?” That small mental shift can transform how you respond to setbacks.
If you are a coach, you can help your athletes by reinforcing this process. When they make mistakes, model objectivity and constructive feedback. Praise them not for perfection but for how quickly they gather information and move forward.
And if you want to take this further, I can help you develop the mental skills to make “get the information, forgive yourself, and play on” a permanent part of your athletic toolkit. Sign up for a session with me at The Mental Barbell, and we can work together on building this mindset so you can perform your best when it matters most.
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