Missing the shot
Many of the people that knows me well, know that at some point in my youth I wanted to become a professional soccer player, I ditched school for two years to pursue that dream and I quit out of fear before I could even know if I was good enough. No excuse other than fear of failure.
Soccer allowed me to had many adventures and it changed my life, I still believe that playing a team sport is the best way to learn many lessons in life, specially if you’ll end working with software teams. Over my short career as a semi-pro player I also failed several final shots for different reasons, and I got a glimpse of the pressure some players feel under extreme conditions.
During this time, I had a mentor who once was the most revered player of the most revered team Mexico has, at one point he was to the eyes of soccer fans a demigod, ironically when he missed one single play, everything was over, few sports stars paid a higher price in Mexico than Eduardo Cisneros, even as a kid I always thought of him as the epitome of failure, mostly because people will remember him missing against their arch-rival. Nevermind that he was a super star, that he had class, that he was a terrific person, after that game, after one shot missed, he was done, his career over.
However, as one progresses in life and grows up, you see how circunstances and conditions alter your decisions to a very narrow success path. For example, would I miss a penalty kick playing with my friends in the park on a Saturday afternoon? Probably not. But if you put me in stadium with 110,000 people (half rooting against me) after a long season, with a shot that will seal the fate of my team and people for decades, I am not even sure I would be able to take the kick, let alone score against the guy who is arguably the best goalkeeper our country has had.
The more I get challenged by life the more I understand Lalo (our nickname for Eduardo), and the more I admire people who took that shot, he stood in front of thousands and made a decision, circunstances dictated the rest, but he was there to try. Some people won’t do it.
In our company, we deal with scarcity every day and dealing with adverse circunstances is everything. For example, would you be able to deliver this feature for a client if she explains it in a perfect way? Probably. But that doesn’t always happen, so how do you deal with things not being perfect? Will you let the opportunity pass until the price is right? Hire until timing is perfect? Make decisions only when well rested and with no stress? Not sure you can bank on it.
The more I was confortable with scarcity the more success became relative to me, at the beginning I use to kick myself when I made a mistake, thinking that I could have controlled the circunstances in a better way. But the more I think about people who refused to take the shot and saved face, and people who took the shot, failed and then paid the price, the more I want to follow the latter and the more I admire the people with courage to take that shot.
Success is taking that shot, not matter what, success is not waiting on proper conditions to make something happen, success is no excuses.
So next time I see Eduardo I’ll probably tell him how much I admire him, I never got to thank him for changing my life so I’ll probably do that as well, I’ll also tell him that despide of the countless insults that career ending move brought him, sometimes all a kid needs is to see someone taking the ball and trying to score, even while pretending he is not scared.
Sawyer Effect is a software company with a estrange habit of making a point with soccer related articles, if you want to join our Design team on their efforts to stop this soccer madness, join us! We are hiring.
