What if it's not 'Coming Home'?

What if it’s not ‘Coming Home’?

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With football fans eagerly anticipating England’s European semi-final against Denmark we are daily informed ‘It’s coming home. It’s coming home’ by which is meant that England will win this game and go on to win the title.

But what if it doesn’t come home? What if we don’t beat Denmark or, having done so, we then lose in the final to Italy? What then?

The answer is, that losing in either of these games will not be the end of the world. There will of course be some sense of upset, sadness and no doubt a sense of England having ‘thrown it away’, but the following day the players, the manager and the fans will wake up to another day and to the new opportunities each day brings. The next day will come, inevitably and Gareth Southgate and his men will have to turn their attention to other challenges, to learning lessons from defeat, to formulating plans to win in the future. In short, life will carry on.

There are very, very few people, if any who have not had to taste defeat or failure, whether in sport, in their education, their employment or their personal lives, but no one is defined by their failures nor should they be. Hard though it is to face a poor football result, a poor exam result or some other negative experience, we are all defined instead by what we do as a consequence of that experience, to pick ourselves up with a determination to be successful in future.

This time of year is associated with exam results – now for University students, next month for school students receiving A Level and GCSE results. Many will achieve everything they had hoped for and move, almost seamlessly to the next phase of their education. Others will be disappointed by results which, at the time will appear to be an insurmountable obstacle to advancement to that next stage. For those students, they should not allow that disappointment to linger, for to do so is itself destructive of aspiration. Instead, they (and those who support them) must treat such results as a hurdle to overcome as they search for an alternative route, a different approach, a better way. Educational establishments are and should be equipped to help students who have not achieved their objectives and should advise accordingly – re-take exams, look for alternative courses or for options to study at a different University. Look for apprenticeships or opportunities which combine work and study. The same applies to job applications – Pupillage, Training Contract or any other employment. Failure to secure the post is not the end of career aspirations. Make other applications, consider alternatives, seek advice on where the right path might lie.

The past cannot be undone, the future is yet to be created.

But, above all, do not see one negative experience as ‘the end’, but simply as a situation which, if addressed properly and positively will in time be no more than just one of those experiences in life which almost all of us will face from time to time and which, so often may in fact be a springboard to a successful future.

Gareth Southgate famously (or infamously) failed to score in the penalty shoot-out against Germany in the semi-final of Euro ’96. No one doubts that he suffered personal angst at this failure, but it did not define him. In the years that followed he carved a playing and managerial path which has brought him, today to the brink of leading the national team to a major final. He is the first England manager to take a team to semi-finals in world and European competition since Sir Alf Ramsey.

Failure does not define us. How we respond to failure does.