Shiffrin’s 3 gifts for the holidays: Gift 1 – Disappointment

Mikaela Shiffrin is truly a gift that keeps on giving. And during this holiday season, Shiffrin (maybe without realizing it) gave ski racers the world over three gifts from her World Cup races in Aspen. Today, I’ll talk about Gift #1: Disappointment.

As most of you know, Shiffrin was three gates from her first solo World Cup giant slalom win (she tied Anna Fenninger at Soelden in 2014) in Aspen a few weeks ago. After the race, she was “understandably disappointed yet also optimistic,” according to an article on SkiRacing.com. More from her shortly.

No one likes to be disappointed. You feel sad, defeated, demoralized. Your heart aches for the opportunity lost and the goal not achieved. It’s a terrible feeling, but not allowing yourself to feel disappointed is another opportunity lost and a lesson not learned.

Certainly, disappointment is not a pleasant emotion; it feels really bad, in fact. But that doesn’t mean it is a bad emotion to be avoided at all costs. To the contrary, disappointment is actually a very healthy and positive emotion that plays an essential role in your pursuit of your ski racing (and other) dreams. But disappointment is only a ‘good’ emotion if you can understand what it is and how it can help propel you toward your ski racing goals.

What is Disappointment?

Disappointment is perhaps the most immediate negative emotion you experience after a perceived failure. It evokes the feelings of thwarted desire, loss, and discouragement when you fail to fulfill your hopes, goals, and expectations. Disappointment is a natural response to failure, but it’s not the disappointment that matters. What matters is how you respond to it.

Unfortunately, many racers react to their disappointment in ways that actually increase the likelihood of more failure and disappointment. These racers lose their motivation, give less effort, give up easily, or quit all together. This reaction to disappointment can cause you to feel incompetent and inadequate, which, if persistent, will hurt your confidence and motivation and will definitely prevent you from achieving your ski racing goals. Though some disappointment following failure is normal, racers who are hit hard by disappointment mope around, look deflated, and feel sorry for themselves for far longer than they should. The problem with this type of reaction to disappointment is that you automatically lose! Yes, disappointment can take the wind out of your sails, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

To be sure, that is NOT how Mikaela responded to her disappointment in the GS. As she stated after her SL race the next day: “Sometimes I think that disappointment can hurt you, or drive you into the next races. Yesterday, I made the decision that I was going to let it fuel me for today.”

And, boy, was she running on jet fuel the next day; Mikaela won the SL by a record-setting 3.07 seconds!

I experienced the same thing in my own ski racing while competing for Middlebury (apologies for briefly regaling you with stories from my youth, but it was a powerful lesson for me worth sharing). My sophomore year at Middlebury, the top junior and college teams in the East were invited to race in two slaloms in western New York (Holiday Valley?) sponsored by Oneida Silversmiths. These races were some of the most coveted of the year because they awarded huge trophies to fith place. Well, after the first day, I thought I had finished fifth so was excited that I was going to collect some hardware at the awards dinner that night. But, when we arrived at the banquet, my coach told me that they changed my time (remember hand timing?) and was dropped to seventh place, meaning no trophy. ARGH! I was so disappointed and so angry. I went to bed mad, woke up mad, and raced mad. And guess what? I won the race the next day by 0.05 seconds over my former Burke teammate Chris Mikell (one of only a few victories in my ski racing career). And, yes, I got a really big silver tray for winning! OK, enough about me.

The Right Attitude Toward Disappointment

Disappointment is a normal, though difficult, part of ski racing. You will inevitably experience disappointment not only in your ski racing, but also in school, other sports, and even in your friendships. But, how you learn to respond to disappointment will determine its impact on their future success and happiness. You can see disappointment as an insurmountable obstacle or you can see it merely as a stumbling block to overcome on the road to your goals. Accepting this different perspective on your disappointment — “I know it feels bad right now, but how can it fuel me?” — gives you the power to minimize the harm that your disappointment does to you in the future. It also helps you to turn the obstacles to your advantage by increasing your resilience, motivation, and confidence.

After “falling off the horse” with a disappointing result, you will naturally feel a brief period of letdown, but then you must pick yourself up and get back on the horse – that is, get back to pursuing your ski racing goals with renewed determination and intensity. By staying positive and enthusiastic, you can experience a better way of feeling in response to failure and find new ways to overcome your setbacks and return to your path toward your goals .

Rather than the disappointment disheartening you and causing you to feel bad about yourself, you can use the experience to affirm your capabilities by showing yourself that you can conquer your failures and your disappointment. As difficult as it may seem, you want to view disappointment as training for adulthood (because you’re going to experience plenty of disappointment as a grown-up!). You want to accept that failure and disappointment as an inevitable and unavoidable part of life and what matters is how you react to it.

So, next time you are disappointed after a race, think about the gift of disappointment that Mikaela Shiffrin gave you for the holidays and use it to fuel yourself toward your goals. And don’t forget thank her for it!