A 12-Year-Old’s Perseverance COMING BACK AFTER A DEFEAT
Last month, my daughter, Rebecca, won the grand championship in the Syracuse International Horse Show. How she achieved this was so inspiring that I wanted to share her experience. Rebecca is 12 years old and knows exactly what she wants to do with her life. She’s been riding horses for several years, and loves every minute at the barn, whether she’s mucking stalls and grooming horses — all the dirty work — or riding her horse, Duncan. She works so she can earn free riding time with Duncan, but the experience has also taught her that horses take a lot of work. She and Duncan competed in the new 13-and-under category at the Syracuse International Horse Show. It was the largest event she had ever competed in, and nerves where high. Before the official show, Rebecca had to compete in a qualifier round to earn a spot. It was her first time competing, and she ended up doing very poorly — as badly as she could possibly do and still get to compete in the championship. However, instead of screaming, hollering, or crying,
Rebecca went right up to her coach afterward and asked, “What do I need to do?”
Kirk Simoneau shares a story about how his daughter rallied from failure, learned from her mistakes, and came out on top.
Before the competition officially started, Rebecca and her coach sat down and talked about working on her routine. They came up with ways she could improve, and they even hung around the ring late at night so she could practice once everyone was gone. Her hard work, diligence, and level-headedness paid off. Rebecca came back and ended up winning the championship. The victory was impressive, but the reason she won was because of how she reacted to her failure. Instead of letting it break her down and defeat her, she learned from it and improved, which is a very special thing for a 12-year-old to do. Too often, when adults are faced with something that doesn’t go their way, they react poorly. There are many people who can learn the lesson from Rebecca that learning from failure yields more success in the long run than letting it defeat you.
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