I was nineteen years old, playing at the USA Olympic Training Center, and I choked.
It wasn’t a catastrophic failure. It was five points. But in that moment, and in the hours that followed, it felt like a verdict. A final answer on whether I belonged at that level.
What happened next gave me the single most important high performance mindset principle I carry as a leader and a coach. And it didn’t come from winning. It came from losing.
Let me back up.
I’d been invited to train with the top under-20 volleyball players from the US and Canada. The best players in both countries who weren’t yet on the Olympic team, one year out. The highest level I’d ever competed at. And I was sitting.
We were up. Twenty to eighteen, maybe. And then there was a bad pass, the kind that happens in volleyball, you can’t prevent it, and I set the ball too tight to the antenna. The hitter got blocked straight down.
I felt it. That subtle shift. The moment of doubt.
Next play, I overcorrected. Set it too far off the net. Easy dig. They turned it into a point. And just like that, the momentum flipped.
We lost. 25-23.
I walked off the court feeling like I had personally lost it for us. My inexperience. My nerves. My inability to close when it mattered.
I called my dad.
I was discouraged. Probably a little embarrassed. And I told him everything, the bad sets, the momentum shift, the final score.
He was quiet for a second. Then he said:
“I don’t think this is bad news at all. You played with the best players in the world at your age group, and your team was winning. They got to twenty-five a little faster than you did. That means you just need five more points. It’s not that you weren’t good enough for this level — you clearly were. You just need to add five more points.”
Five more points.
That was it.
Not: you failed. Not: you’re not ready. Not: you need to start over.
Just: you’re close. Closer than you think. Go get five more points.
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The High Performance Mindset Shift That Changes Everything
That conversation changed the way I think about performance. About failure. About what it means to fall short.
Because here’s what most people do when they lose, when a deal falls through, when a team member disappoints them, when a strategy doesn’t work:
They catastrophize.
They turn a five-point deficit into evidence that they’re not cut out for this. That the business was a mistake. That they hired wrong, led wrong, built wrong.
And none of that is true.
Most of the time — not all the time, but most — you’re not failing. You’re five points behind. You’ve been in the game long enough to be competitive. You’ve built something real. You just need to make a few adjustments and add five more points.
I use this with clients all the time.
The owner who’s exhausted and starting to wonder if it’s all worth it — they’re not finished. They’re five points away from a structure that actually holds without them.
The operator who feels like the owner doesn’t trust them — they’re not failing. They’re five points away from proving they can handle it.
The young leader who just made a costly mistake — they’re not done. They just got a measurement. Now they know exactly where they need to grow.
Failure is not a verdict. It’s data.
It tells you how close you are. It shows you the gap — and most of the time, the gap is smaller than the story you’re telling yourself about it.
What “Five More Points” Looks Like for You
I never made it to the Olympic team. That’s okay.
But I carried that “five more points” high performance mindset for leaders into everything I’ve built since — my career, my coaching, my business, my life.
So here’s the question: where are you catastrophizing right now when you should be adjusting?
Where have you written yourself off as not good enough — when the real answer is just: five more points?
Don’t let the loss become the story of who you are. Let it become the measurement of how close you already are.
Then go get the points.
→ I have a 12-week Leadership Accelerator starting soon. Comment “Leader” or book a call here!
