Be­ing able to bounce back from dis­ap­point­ment or fail­ure is some­thing we all en­counter or faced with when try­ing to ac­com­plish goals in our lives. It can be once, twice or it could be an on­go­ing process we are still ex­pe­ri­enc­ing to­day. And it comes in var­i­ous forms, busi­ness ven­ture, try­ing to stay healthy, fail­ure in ex­am­i­na­tions, not just to ob­tain the pass mark but be­ing un­able to ace it, a failed re­la­tion­ship with our sig­nif­i­cant oth­er and of­ten in sport. We tend to hear more about the ex­pe­ri­ences in this field be­cause of the at­ten­tion it some­times gets in the pub­lic do­main.

Re­silience, or “men­tal tough­ness,” is a key psy­cho­log­i­cal as­pect of the sport as it is in any­thing we en­counter in our lives. The abil­i­ty to bounce back from a poor per­for­mance or a detri­men­tal mis­take is cru­cial to one’s suc­cess. It is im­por­tant to recog­nise that mis­takes and fail­ures are part of the game, part of life. How­ev­er, when an ath­lete places too much em­pha­sis on his or her fail­ures, per­for­mance be­gins to suf­fer, just like in life away from the sport­ing field. Be­ing able to bounce back or be­ing re­silient is some­times not just re­lat­ed to fail­ure but some­times just the dif­fi­cult jour­ney one may have to en­counter where chal­lenges seem nev­er-end­ing. A re­silient per­son is one who is able to over­come set­backs, re­main con­fi­dent, and fo­cus on the present.

Hon­ey Thaljieh was sev­en years old when she had her first taste of foot­ball in the streets of her neigh­bour­hood in Beth­le­hem. As a young woman play­ing foot­ball, and liv­ing un­der oc­cu­pa­tion in the West Bank, Thaljieh had to over­come cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal bar­ri­ers to pur­sue the sport she loves. But her de­ter­mi­na­tion helped her go from play­ing in the nar­row streets of Beth­le­hem to co-found­ing and cap­tain­ing the first women’s foot­ball team in Pales­tine. She suf­fered a ca­reer-end­ing knee in­jury but it was not enough to take her out com­plete­ly. What could have been a cru­el twist of fate set her on a path to en­cour­ag­ing more women to par­tic­i­pate in sport? Thaljieh be­came the first woman in the Mid­dle East to ob­tain a FI­FA Mas­ter in sports ed­u­ca­tion. Cur­rent­ly, she is the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er for FI­FA. Talk about re­silience and over­com­ing ob­sta­cles.

Our bud­ding swim­ming star Dy­lan Carter demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to bounce back from in­jury fol­low­ing a pec­toral in­jury in April, bounc­ing back and dom­i­nat­ed at the CAC Games cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in Colom­bia. Re­silient peo­ple like Thaljieh and Carter cope well, re­cov­er and may ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit from stress­ful chal­lenges. Those with low re­silience be­come over­whelmed—dwell on prob­lems and uti­lize un­healthy cop­ing mech­a­nisms—in­cur­ring set­backs and neg­a­tive con­se­quences of dis-stress.

Foot­baller Keron Cum­mings is an­oth­er ex­am­ple. It might have tak­en him just over three years, but his lat­est per­for­mance for Cen­tral FC is a sign that he is bounc­ing back from once be­ing a bright spot in the na­tion­al team be­fore a gun­shot wound side­lined him, to now find­ing good form again. While some deal it with bet­ter than oth­ers and ex­pe­ri­ences may dif­fer, we may ask why. How can they bounce back and we can’t or we’re tak­ing longer than they did? Is this a ge­net­ic trait or can any­one learn to do this?

Re­search states that re­silient peo­ple tend to be more self-con­fi­dent and in­tel­li­gent. They take more risks, have a stronger de­sire to learn and im­prove, and fo­cus more on per­son­al ex­cel­lence and aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment. These are as­so­ci­a­tions and not nec­es­sar­i­ly cause and ef­fect. Whether hav­ing these traits al­lows peo­ple to be­come more re­silient or be­ing re­silient re­sults in peo­ple gain­ing these ben­e­fi­cial qual­i­ties is not known. While there is a ge­net­ic com­po­nent to re­silience, it is al­so a trait and skill set that can be learned and cul­ti­vat­ed.

A per­son or ath­lete must face and con­quer ad­ver­si­ty in or­der to suc­cess­ful­ly cope with it in the fu­ture. The say­ing “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” ap­plies per­fect­ly to an ath­lete com­ing off a bad per­for­mance. The abil­i­ty to let go of mis­takes is vi­tal to a suc­cess­ful per­for­mance. The bet­ter an ath­lete can do this, the bet­ter equipped he will be to cope with try­ing sit­u­a­tions in sport. Elite ath­letes pos­sess a men­tal tough­ness that al­lows them to thrive off of fail­ure and rel­ish suc­cess.

I will end this week's col­umn with a quote from Thaljieh which states. "I grew up with a lot of mo­ti­va­tion and de­ter­mi­na­tion. Even in my house, I was the on­ly one who would say no to my fa­ther. To say no to your fa­ther in the Mid­dle East in that pa­tri­ar­chal so­ci­ety is not easy. When we start to play on the pitch we for­get every­thing – we for­get the suf­fer­ing at home, at the bor­ders. I found that it was an es­cape from all the prob­lems we faced in Pales­tin­ian so­ci­ety, whether it was po­lit­i­cal, cul­tur­al or so­cial. If I’m not con­vinced why you tell me ‘no’, I will not ac­cept it and I would chal­lenge it. It’s the same, not on­ly with my dad but wher­ev­er I go."

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa. He is al­so cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer and has trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly be­cause of sport and me­dia over the past eigh­teen years. He is al­so a cer­ti­fied me­dia train­er for ath­letes.