What College Football Taught Me About Failure, Growth, and Living in the Moment
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Episode Summary
I didn’t expect to learn so much from watching college football, but I did. This season, I got caught up in the games, cheering with my in-laws, and I started to see how much sports can teach us about life. In this episode, I’m sharing five key lessons I learned—about handling failure, learning from challenges, and staying present in the moment. Even if you’re not into sports, these ideas might help you look at problems differently and find new ways to keep going. Stay tuned till the end—I’ve also got a free guided meditation for you, because we all deserve a little grounding as we navigate this wild ride.
Topics:
Why failure is only failure when we label it that way
How challenges and setbacks can become pivotal moments for growth
Reframing hard experiences as opportunities for learning and self-improvement
The joy and transformation that comes from embracing challenges rather than avoiding them
The power of being present and letting go of past failures and future anxieties
Episode Resources:
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Cecelia Baum Mandryk (00:12.384)
Hey and welcome to Calmer Conversations, episode number 30. I'm Cecilia, your host, and today I want to talk about a few takeaways that I have from the college football season. And I know that this maybe isn't something you expect from me or maybe it is something you expect from me. I do live in the US, so maybe you expect that I follow football. I will say that I am a fan of sports.
and I'm kind of a universal fan of sports. love watching people try. I love watching people expand themselves. I love the triumph of it, the glory of it. I love, how you can watch somebody who's, on paper just lost or failed and how much joy and presence they can have and the growth that's available to them. So I love sports and I'm kind of.
I had the benefit of watching sports as a kid with my mother. My mother is, I think, one of the most beautiful sports fans because she also just loves sports. She, at least in my eyes, and maybe this isn't true, so she might be able to correct me, but I see her cheering for whoever has the ball or whoever is taking a swing with the club and golf or whoever is competing in that moment, she is cheering for them. It's such a beautiful way to watch sports because
you're always cheering for everybody and you're kind of just for humanity and for the kind of game itself. And so because of this, have I've watched sports all over the world in different places. I've watched all different kinds of sports and I think they're all amazing and fun. I have not watched college football regularly since 2011, which is when I lived in Texas. And then I followed UT kind of loosely.
because a lot of people around me did. followed the Texans, which I know is a professional team because I lived in Houston. But generally, I'm a little bit like my mom that I cheer for everybody. This year, we are living with my in-laws. Actually, we've been living with them since August, and they're big Penn State fans. And so I've been following college football for the first time in over a decade, and it's been really amazing and fun to watch them.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (02:33.514)
I'm recording this the week that Ohio State won the national championship. And again, as a fan of sports in general, I got to cheer for whoever was playing, even though Penn State didn't make it to the national championship. So I want to share some of my takeaways from watching this and that I've kind of incorporated into my life or I don't know, I use in my coaching. So the first one is failure is only failure when you call it failure.
So this comes up so often both for myself and my clients. It comes up in life for almost all of us. And it's that our brains don't really care if we fail, right? When I watch my kids, they don't understand, when they mess something up, they don't call it a failure in their brain, right? For them, it's part of the learning process. And so we as humans,
Are really only afraid of the shame the embarrassment the pain that happens when we make a mistake or quote-unquote fail and We talk to ourselves in that way. So really failure is something that Is that we create in our brain, right? We get to call something a failure or a area for growth or a learning opportunity or a place for feedback and I know for instance as a kid taking tests when I didn't get
very high marks, I considered it a failure. And that's because I learned that anything less than perfect was a failure. And actually, what is a more powerful way and how I see it now is if I took a test and there's something that I got wrong, it's actually just feedback. And it's telling me that's an area that I need to work on. Right. If I host a workshop and people don't really resonate with people, that doesn't mean that I'm wrong or that I failed. It means that I kind of need to work on how I frame it or how I communicate it, because then it makes it more accessible for people.
or it pushes me to explain what I mean to use the concepts in a different way. And so watching, for instance, plays in football and watching them adjust, for instance, watching offensive coordinators and then the players get to know the team they're playing and shift and change from play to play or quarter to quarter was so neat to see. Because when they, for instance, didn't hold the line,
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (04:54.39)
And I will just say that I'm not an expert in football, so I'm probably going to speak very incorrectly in this episode. And please just give me a little bit of grace. But for instance, when the offensive line wasn't able to hold the line, they're learning, right? They're learning about the defense. And you could call it a failure. And if their brains got into the failure mentality, then they wouldn't be able to adjust. But they're learning and adjusting on the fly. And I think that's so beautiful. And you actually get a chance.
instead of condemning yourself, you can see possibility when you fail, when you get feedback from the world around you, you get to choose how you interpret it. And your perspective and how you interpret it is everything. Okay, so failure is only failure when you call it that. And it's really only failure when you shame yourself or beat yourself up for it.
Okay, the second takeaway. You don't actually know if something is good or bad for you in the moment. This is so hard for part of our brain to get its head around, right? To kind of like...
really understand, but in the moment, something can seem bad, but ultimately it is good for us. And this came up a lot with the Ohio State players and the coach, Coach Ryan Day after the game, they were talking about their season and they were talking about this game specifically. And almost every single one of them that I saw, because I'm sure there are more interviews than what I saw, mentioned their loss to Michigan as a pivotal point in their season and a point where they came together.
Now, most people would say from the outside that losing a game is a bad thing, right? That it's bad, that it's not good, that that's actually like detrimental to them in general. And kind of like number one, when we take ourselves away from judging something in the moment, when you don't say this is good or bad, I don't actually know how this is gonna end up. I don't actually know how this is gonna play out. Then suddenly we open ourselves up to something becoming good, to using something for our own advantage, for our own growth, for our own...
advancement, even if it might not necessarily look like that. So these players all mentioned that this loss to Michigan really showed them, helped them come together. It helped them understand what they were capable of when they were in the present moment, when they allowed themselves to learn and grow. And it really drove most of them to end their season, to wrap up their season in a different way than somebody might have guessed when they lost Michigan, who
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (07:13.262)
I don't think they were an unranked team at the time, but they definitely weren't ranked as high as Ohio State. So you don't actually know in the moment if something is good or bad. You don't know how it's going to play out and you can call it good or you can call it bad, but that changes how you see something. So asking yourself, not gaslighting yourself, not going into toxic positivity, but really asking yourself, how could this be for me? Or could this be for me? Or even I'm open to this being for me. So the Ohio State team, for instance, saying,
I'm open to this being for me. And if you want to take it down to a smaller level, for instance, you know, and I don't know if this was correct, but the offensive line, for instance, not holding the line and letting, for instance, defensive players get to the quarterback or rush him or whatever. They are learning in that moment and they can call that bad that that happened or they can say this is a learning opportunity. Right. So it's kind of framing it in your head and using it for you without lying to yourself or going into that toxic.
positivity place, which is, that's not what I'm saying. Okay.
Takeaway number three, the challenge is part of the fun. The challenge is part of the fun, right? They're doing the people who are playing sports in that game in almost everything, they're pushing themselves, right? They're showing up day after day to see if they can change, if they can improve, if they can make their pitch go one mile an hour faster, if they can, like if they can, I don't know,
volley and tennis just a little bit longer, if they can place the ball a little bit better, they're seeing if they can hold that offensive line just for one more second, right? They are trying to see they're on their edge and they're on their edge not because it's easy or because they know they're going to get it right every time, but they're on their edge because they know that's where they're growing and that's where they're expanding. And this kind of plays into everyone with perfectionism, definitely with me at some point.
when we are trying to be perfect or really good at things or we're trying to just be in ease and comfort, we don't actually grow. We don't actually become the person that we could be or we want to be, right? And challenge when you stop making failure something bad is actually kind of a fun thing. We actually like challenge. We actually like that place where we're pushing and growing and figuring things out when we're honest with ourselves and we stop beating ourselves up.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (09:32.182)
And I see this all the time. I saw it a lot, obviously, when I was watching football. But I see it all the time with my kids, right? They don't do something because it's easier, because they're going to be perfect at it. They do it because it's hard, right? And I can, it's really neat to watch my almost five year old do this with in the pool. And she kind of just does her own thing and she'll like work on something and work on something like she was teaching herself how to do front flips in the water. So not like off the side of the pool, but in the water.
And nobody told her that this was the thing that you could do or that she should be doing it. But it was something that for some reason she decided she wanted to be able to do. And she worked on it and worked on it and worked on it. And then all of sudden she could do it. And then she could do two in a row. And then she just kind of then that was it. Right. She achieved it. And she practiced for so long, not because it was easy, but because it was a challenge for her to figure out. And it was fun. It's actually kind of neat to be in that challenging space and pushing yourself to grow. So challenge is part of the fun. And
If you're somebody who routinely steps away from things because they feel hard or because you're scared, this is where your brain is trying to keep you safe. That's okay, but recognizing what it's doing and then asking, why would I do the hard thing? Why would I start to meet myself in this new place? And I'm not saying that you need to continually be pushing yourself or finding your edge, but really asking, why would I wanna do something that feels kind of hard? What is in it for me? And what might I get out of it?
Okay, number four, being in the present moment is where it's all happening. And obviously these things are all connected, right? You like I was saying, when you're, when you don't know if something is good or bad, you can come, you can kind of let it go, you can surrender and you can be in the moment. It is, it was so amazing to watch what happened when the players were clearly very present in the moment. And they made incredible plays.
They made kind of magical things happen. And the only way you can do that is by letting go of the past failures or the past stories that your brain is telling you, or the fear I might mess this up or I might get this wrong and letting go. Well, I guess that's like the future one, the anxiety I must, I might mess it up or I've messed it up in the past, right? Those two different things. And you're just saying, all I need to do is be here right now. All I need to do is whatever your position on the field is, right? And then you can do these unbelievable like,
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (11:52.81)
amazing things, right? These defensive interceptions where somebody like jumps at just the right moment, kind of probably obscenely high in the air and grabs a ball, This touching somebody like have a takeaway from the quarterback, watching somebody running back, kind of like find the hole and move through it. It's just so, and maybe this is why I love sports too, because when you're in the moment, you get to see things differently, time slows down and really
It's impressive to see how much perhaps meditation and how much presence all of these players have. And I think it is outstanding and we can all take that away and saying, okay, if we come into the present moment, what can we do? And that doesn't even need to be doing something amazing physically, right? It's like when I come into the present moment with my kid, what kind of connection is possible? When I'm not making their behavior mean something, when I'm not making myself a terrible parent, when I'm not judging them and what's happening is good or bad.
How can I be with them in that moment? So when you're in the present moment, it's so much easier to feel calm, to feel confident, to have that kind of grounded sense of being because you're not going into the worrying and the anxiety. You're not moving back and forth between the future and the past and losing yourself in the middle there. Okay.
And then the last takeaway that I had, it made me tear up, honestly. I was watching, so I got really into this, by the way. I was really into college football this year. So I'm in this for you, right? So Ryan Day, in the interview that I saw after the game, he's the head coach for Ohio State. And he said that this is why I got into coaching, to help people's dreams come true, to help these kids grow, to help them become the person, the player that they're meant to be.
And honestly, like that's why I do what I do, right? I've been thinking a lot this month about who I am as a coach and what I wanna bring into the world and the impact that I wanna have. And I'm here for you. I'm here to help you figure out how to work with your brain so that you can have a deeply meaningful and fulfilling life. I'm here because I know that feeling calm in your brain, that feeling present in your life, that feeling confident in your life is entirely possible for you.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (14:12.962)
You just have to work with your brain a little bit different. You just have to have slightly different neural pathways and a slightly different nervous system state. And there are tools that are available for you to do this, right? And they're not quick fixes. They're not things that are gonna work in a week or a day, but they are things that if you come back to them time and time again, I know that they will make huge differences in your life. So I'm telling you, I'm here for you. I want you to be able to, I want you to have
a life that you're excited to live. And that doesn't mean it needs to look any certain way. Like you don't need to get into professional sports. I likely never will. You don't need to save the world in some big way, like become a major political figure or anything like that. You can do this in your life right now, how you want to do it. And I actually think that that's the most important thing, right? To live your life. But I want to give you the tools to courageously do that, to show up with love for yourself every day.
to act with wisdom within your life. So those are my takeaways from watching college football this year. You can obviously tell that I'm kind of excited about it in general. I think it's been really fun, honestly, to watch it. I love sports. I love the magic. I love watching people try. I just think it's so cool. think you can see the hours that these people have put into this work. we don't necessarily appreciate that, where we see them perform, but...
the dreams of these people, the work that they've put in and how they can bring that to the table in a game is just, it blows my mind. It's so inspiring to me. I have a guided meditation for you. So I start all of my sessions in the exact same way with grounding and it's to bring people into the present moment. It's to help bring awareness to your body and your thoughts and your emotions and
people keep asking me to record it separately so that they can use it. So I've done that for all of my clients, but I'm giving it to you for free. So there's a link that you can grab in the show notes. It's totally free. You can use it. You can download it as many times as you want to. I use it actually. I use my own meditations. I use it very frequently. So I'm including that for you. So you can start living this life. And then really, if you want to do this, come join the Life Lab.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (16:36.918)
If you like what I talk about on here, if you like my approach, if you like my style of learning and being, please come to the Life Lab. Give yourself the next 12 months to change your own world, to blow your own mind. I promise that if you come join me, even if you show up incredibly inconsistently, you will make major changes in your life. Okay, those are my takeaways from the college football season. If you watched it, I'd love to hear yours. If you have questions that you'd like me to answer on the podcast, make sure you reach out.
I'd love to hear from you, hear how you're implementing this work in your life. I love you so much and I will see you next time.