The other day at a school, I missed a trick shot.
Then I missed it again.
And again.
Honestly, I think moments like that matter more than people realize, especially when kids are watching. It would be easy to look at that and say I failed. But I do not really see it that way. Most of what we call failure is actually practice. It is repetition. It is learning. It is what it looks like when someone is willing to keep trying before they have figured it out.
That is one of the reasons I do not mind missing in front of kids.
When I miss a trick shot at a school, I am not just missing a trick shot. I am setting an example. I am showing students that it is okay to try something hard without knowing if it is going to work. I am showing them that missing is normal. More than that, I am showing them that missing over and over again is often part of getting good at something.
One of my favourite Guinness World Records titles is the one I hold with Davy for the Longest Flying Disc Throw Caught by a Dog. We broke that record on the 62nd attempt. Which means we failed 61 times in a row before we got the one that counted.
That is how a lot of big moments work.
People see the catch. They see the record. They see the celebration. What they do not see are all the throws that were too short, too far, off target, mistimed, dropped, or just not good enough. But those attempts were not separate from the success. They were part of it. They were the reason it happened.
I think that is important to remember, especially when we are working with kids. If every miss gets treated like something negative, then kids start to believe that struggling means something is wrong. They start to believe that if they are not good at something right away, maybe it is not for them. And that is such a dangerous lesson.
Because the truth is, struggling usually means you are learning.
A lot of well-known people have talked about this. One of my favourite examples is Ed Sheeran talking about failure and learning on The Howard Stern Show because I think he explains it really well.
People connect with that idea because deep down, most of us know it is true. We learn very little when everything comes easily. We learn when something does not work and we have to adjust. We learn when we keep going.
I wrote recently about the Olympics and how about 85% of athletes at the 2026 Games did not win a medal. Think about that for a second. If winning a medal is the only measure of success, then most Olympians would be considered failures. That is obviously nonsense. They are still among the very best in the world. They still put in years of work, sacrifice, discipline, and effort to get there. Not standing on a podium does not erase any of that.
I think the same thing is true in school, in sport, and in life.
If our definition of success is too narrow, then we end up discouraging the exact things that lead to growth. Trying. Missing. Adjusting. Sticking with something. Being willing to look a little silly while you figure it out. Those are not signs that you are failing in a bad way. Those are signs that you are in the process.
That is the example I want to set for kids.
Of course I love making the big throw or hitting the trick shot. Those moments are fun. But I also think there is value in kids seeing the misses. They need to see that getting good at something can look messy. They need to see that progress is rarely clean. They need to see that you can miss again and again and still be completely on the right path.
Sometimes failure is not failure at all.
Sometimes it is just practice.
Sometimes it is exactly what it looks like when someone is doing the work and refusing to give up before the breakthrough comes.
And if kids can learn that early, they will be much more willing to try hard things, stay with them longer, and understand that repetition, mistakes, and setbacks are not proof that they should stop.
They are often proof that they are getting closer.
