I've got to screw up more. We gotta get some bloopers. Over/under on screw-ups
I'm putting at three. Here we go.
Thank you for joining us for today's 7 Super Tips
I'm your host Erik Qualman. Most of you know me as Equalman. Today, I am super excited
we have us gold medalists and also World Cup champion, Abby Wambach. That's right
the player that has scored the most World Cup goals, male or female, in the
history of the World Cup. So, without further ado here's Abby Wambach with her 7 Super Tips
Make failure your fuel. Here's something the best athletes understand
but seems like a harder concept for non athletes to grasp. Non athletes don't
know what to do with the gift of failure so they hide it pretend it never
happened reject it outright they end up wasting
it listen failure is not something to be
ashamed of it's something to be powered by failure is the highest octane fuel
your life can run on you've got to learn to make failure your fuel
I think that's a common denominator by people that can reach levels of success that I've been
able to reach I know what I do well like I really I know I know what I do well do
not tell me what I do well tell me what I suck at seriously because that is how
I want to approach my life I want to approach my life in a way that I keep
challenging myself I keep bettering myself day in and day out and and and so
those are the coaches that I always I always connected the most with are the
ones that that were a little bit harder on me that were a little bit had a
higher standard for me because you know I think we all know what we do well
sometimes it's hard to take criticism and sometimes it's hard to even if it's
constructive it's sometimes hard but you know know yourself and know that any
kind of criticism good or bad is important for all human beings to be
able to experience and be able to deal with emotionally.
Like all little girls, I was taught to be grateful. I was taught to keep my head down, stay on the path
and get my job done I was freaking Little Red Riding Hood
you know the fairy tale just one iteration of the warning stories girls
are told the world over Little Red Riding Hood heads off to the woods and
is given strict instructions stay on the path
don't talk to anybody keep your head down hidden underneath your Handmaid's
Tale cape and she does at first but then she dares to get a little curious and
she ventures off the path that's of course when she encounters the big bad
wolf and all hell breaks loose the message is clear don't be curious don't
make trouble don't say too much or bad things will happen I stayed on the path
out of fear not of being eaten by a wolf but of being cut being benched losing my
paycheck if I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be this
Abby you were never Little Red Riding Hood you were always the wolf.
Whenever I talk to kids, no matter where I am, success is always one of those topics
that eventually comes up and the truth is is I've reached my level of success
in one way and I believe that everybody chooses their own path I always like to
tell kids that I wish that they could be like me in some ways but I want them to
be like themselves don't try to be like Abby Wambach be better than me and do
the things that I've done in some ways but you also have to tweak it in other
ways to make it your own so that that's what makes it perfectly yours when you
get to that level and you get to that top success
Lead from the bench. Imagine this, you've scored more goals
than any human being on the planet female or male
you've co-captain and lead Teen USA in almost every category for the past
decade and you and your coach sit down and decide together that you won't be a
starter in your last World Cup for Team USA so that sucked
you'll feel bench sometimes - you'll be passed over for the promotion taken off
the project you might even be finding yourself holding a baby instead of a
brief briefcase watching your colleagues get ahead here's what's important you're
allowed to be disappointed when it feels like life's benched you what you aren't
allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench during that last
World Cup my teammates told me that my presence my support my vocal and
relentless belief in them from the bench is what gave them the confidence they
needed to win us that championship if you're not a leader on the bench then
don't call yourself a leader on the field.
The only label that I need to
actually really adhere to and think about and be is human because what's
happening is we're putting ourselves in these boxes these these labeled boxes
and we cut ourselves off from each other the reason why we do that is because if
I'm in this little box I feel a little bit safer because I have like this
little community of these walls up but what that's doing it's cutting us off
from all these other opportunities and possibilities and ability to expand we
can challenge each other to kind of break away these boundaries and walls we
can challenge each other to not just be better at our job but like let's be
better humans that's you don't have to literally pay
to be a good person you you you you have to just earn the things that you do in
your life by all the little choices that you make.
Throughout my life, my pack has
been my team teams need a unifying structure and the best way to create one
collective heartbeat is to establish rules for your team to live by it
doesn't matter what specific page you're all on just as long as you're on the same one.
That's it for today's 7 Super Tips. Thank you for joining us. Thank you
Abby Wambach for your amazing 7 super tips. If you want to make sure you don't
miss the next episode, hit that subscribe button below
or maybe you're caught in traffic or working out is your thing and you prefer
the podcast version. The podcast is just called Super U. The letter U as in
university and again the podcast in the show are all designed to unlock and
unleash your inner superpower. So I hope you got a lot of today's show and again
this is Equalman reminding all of us
It's not what we take for the world it's what we leave behind.
I got an eye roll from the camera crew saying, "You screw up plenty."
Here we go. And then there's a jackhammer back there
but you got focus