Aryan Manoj Blogs

What do you do when something you have prepared months or years for doesn’t go the way you imagined? Do you move on quickly, analyse and overthink every mistake, or let the disappointment linger?
Failure in sport, just like in life, is inevitable. Learning how to respond to it is what shapes your journey and the kind of person you become. We all have a story in our head about how we want things to go, and when you spend your whole life working tirelessly towards something, the weight of not succeeding just multiplies.

As someone that has a lot of expectations from myself, I haven’t always been very good at dealing with failure, whether that was at a race, in training or just life in general. I’m someone that hates to lose. I used to be quite hard on myself whenever I didn’t do as well as I should have, and to a certain degree I still am.

So, what do I do when things don’t go according to plan? I take some time to feel the things I am feeling, the disappointment, the self-doubt, the anger, all of it. But once that’s done, I get back to work. Like one of my coaches says, “take 24 hours, feel all your feelings and then get back to work” and I fully believe in that. Dwelling too much on your shortcomings doesn’t help anyone. Trying to learn from each setback and making sure that doesn’t happen again is what helps me feel like I am taking steps in the right direction.

The perspective that has helped me the most is to accept that there is always a possibility of things not working out, and that is the whole point of doing anything meaningful. The question of, “what if things don’t pan out the way I want them to?”, is what makes the taste of success sweeter. The unpredictability and unforgiving nature of our sport even when you do everything right is what excites me the most.

Setbacks are the real test of self-belief. Being resilient and keeping at it when it feels like nothing is going well is one of the most important skills a person can have and is something that every athlete that wants to be successful must develop. It is much easier said than done, but if it was easy, then everyone would do it.

I’ve learned that failure isn’t something to fear. It’s feedback. It shows us where we need to grow, adjust, and improve. When you see it that way, failure becomes less of a setback and more of a guide.