As players competing at Wimbledon enter the tunnel to Centre Court, surely one of the most famous landmarks in all of sport, they pass under two lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If”.
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same
While there’s no shortage of books, TED Talks, podcasts, and speeches offering up a positive spin on failure (and even calling it an impostor, no doubt), I have yet to come across anything that puts it in the same bucket as success. Now, with any poem we can’t be certain our interpretation captures the intent of the poet, but with Kipling’s famous prose I feel confident in taking my shot.
When he calls triumph an “impostor”, I have to imagine he’s attempting to shed some light on the dangers of success. Again, plenty has been written and spoken about the dangers of failure and not letting it define you, sap your energy, kill your spirit...fill in the blank. But we are in new territory when we consider the dangers of accomplishment:
Complacency
The most dangerous byproduct of success is the human tendency to let down. When our results tell us we were the better player/team, the easiest and most natural response is to ease off the gas, dial back the pursuit, stop asking good questions, and let the fire to improve die down, even if it’s just a bit.
Loss of Perspective
This one pairs nicely with complacency. We taste a bit of success and we lose track of the process that got us there or the reality that we are not our results. Here’s golf superstar Rory McIlroy, offering some brilliant...well, perspective:
“The big thing is: I am not my score, I am not my results,” he explained. “That’s been one of my big things. It’s perspective, it’s perception … I think I’ve had a healthy dose of perspective this year, and that’s helped, either with great results like The Players [which he won], or undesirable results of not being able to finish a tournament off. Being able to put both of those things in perspective have been a good thing.”
Subtlety
The effects of success are much more subtle than those of failure -- and subtle is more dangerous. The complacency and loss of perspective that easily tag along with accomplishment can sneak in and go unnoticed until wins become losses. This is once again about human nature. The average coach and player don’t seek answers as fervently following victories. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as they say.
To bring it back to Kipling, I think this is why he calls triumph and disaster impostors. Both results can easily lead to false conclusions and counterproductive actions. It is an error to obsess over either one. In the arena of sport, we are better off pursuing improvement and long-term mastery rather than specific results. Process over results. Or, once again in the brilliant words of Kipling:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
Click here for the full text of Rudyard Kipling’s “If”