When I hear “I got it! I got it!” at a youth baseball game, I almost instinctively hold my breath – and sometimes I even close my eyes. There’s just something about a wide-eyed kid running full throttle, yelling at the top of his or her lungs, face flush to the sky, glove wide open that makes me, well – a little uneasy. I desperately want to hear “thwack … yeah!” not “thunk … aw!” a few seconds after, “I got it! I got it!” And plenty of times, to my delight, I do.
I love those times. I love seeing the kid beaming ear-to-ear, the coaches whapping their hands together, teammates fist-pumping into the air. It’s those other times, the “thunk…aw” ones, I hate. What do you say, how do you act when someone puts it all out there, commits 110% in front of God and country, and then – “thunk …aw?”
The all too familiar “nice try” or “that’s alright” don’t seem as encouraging or confidence-instilling to me as saying something like, “next time!”
When a kid (or anyone) commits to something – especially so publicly, they need to know that others believe they really can do it; if not this time, the next, or the next, or maybe even the next. “Its’ alright” and “nice try” make me feel like it really didn’t matter if they succeeded in whatever they were attempting – as if no one really expected them to anyway.
“Next time!” Now that’s something that can help someone muster up the courage to try again and again, and better yet, can give them the boost of confidence they may need to believe that eventually they will indeed succeed.