F*** Your Goals. Embrace the Process: How Changing our Mindset to Welcome Failure Can Better Athlete's Mental Health.

Hear me out, goals are important. Having passion is important. Aiming for something big in life is always great. The best goals are those that are not finite. Goals that are built upon a process are the best goals to have.

Fall in love with the grind. Fall in love with a growth mindset. Fall in love with improving by 1% each day.

I think many coaches and players my age, or around it, feel as if the world is passing them by if things do not happen quickly enough. I have been there. In a world where social media and money are causing comparison problems and instant-gratification noise, it's understandable why expectations and mindsets have shifted.

There is merit, strength, and discipline in fighting the desire to achieve it all right now. In turn, this shows your athletes that the process is a good thing to be dedicated to. This is where I try to encourage my players and myself to be different. Again, fall in love with the process.

I have always had spurts of it. I love pursuing goals in the weight room, with my running and lifting. I love academia and enjoy having projects that revolve around sports and football.

Many of my goals are never-ending. I have a method that rewards me when I achieve a level, but a mindset that wants to see how far I can truly go with the things I love.

Have more than one. Diversify your path.

This brings me to another important point: have more than one, diversify your goals. I try to encourage my players to have multiple goals, to not only keep themselves occupied but also to get feedback, grow in several areas, and to implement confidence boosters.

Many of my athletes at a young age have a hard time setting one goal, let alone having the ability to operate on several different paths and levels. My job as a coach is to show them how to do so and to verbally be able to describe how to go about planning it all out.

For real. What are you actually chasing? What are you pouring all of your energy into?

An example of where I have had the most work with my freshman offensive lineman is in the weight room. I had to start at square one. Form? What is a max? How do I read a lifting chart? How can we plan this out?

I found a sheet that created an 8-day plan based on their max lifts, something for them to read and follow. Structure! That was step 1.

Now here is where the dangerous pitfall everyone is warned about crept in. Comparison

The thief of joy and catalyst of stagnation. My freshman abandoned their plan in attempts to keep up with the older guys in the group. What happened was a waste of time. They were not executing the correct reps or sets, form was awful, and they were putting themselves in a position to be severely injured.

I had to confront it with them. I shared with them that this is where they needed to be selfish. They had to communicate the proper weight for themselves, even if that meant going down in total weight. They needed to block out the noise and dedicate themself to the process. There, they would begin to see results. They are still young and are learning how to navigate away from a culture of instant gratification and immediate results. Good things take time. Great things take even longer.

They are too focused on the result, the glory of it all, and my job is to make sure they keep their eyes on the real prize: the process.

Ashley Cornwell coaching offensive line drills at the NFL International Player Pathway Program Pro Day (2025).

Why Does This Matter in Sports?

Immediate results, instant gratification, having it all now - these mindsets and beliefs are ruining sports. The privatization of training and club teams has emerged over the last few years, along with the ridiculous idea of specialization. Opportunities are now limited, and the idea of diversifying kids' paths is now actively facing barriers in the fearmongering of securing a scholarship to college. Your kid is like 6, Stephanie. Let her try out some things.

I remember growing up, all of our youth sports took place at the rec center. Gear, coaches, and the necessary structure were provided for little to no cost. I played sports with my brother, even hockey; we could borrow the equipment for the season.

I remember wanting to continue hockey. My parents told me no. I was told the only opportunities for entering middle school were club teams, and my parents could not afford the costs of it.

I know this story rings true for so many more people like me. I was a great skater; my life may have been different, but I found other, more cost-effective sports such as football and soccer (football pads and helmets were provided, and my soccer cleats worked for that as well).

Specialization and professionalization worsen the opportunity gap because these once “free” opportunities are now competing for coaches and players of the club teams. With fewer sign-ups, these free opportunities cannot provide everyone with equipment, and start to charge money. This, in turn, takes away the opportunity for many athletes to participate in a sport that does not have a club team alternative. Limits their growth. Limits their options.

It causes a singular mindset and is a singular goal. Or they quit altogether.

Keep in mind, for the parents who are convinced that putting little Johnny on all the baseball club teams by 5 years old, he probably won't make it to the MLB. If he is not talented enough, you're going to destroy his body by limiting its athletic potential and straining the same joints, ligaments, and muscles day in and day out. And that's if his mental health hasn't been wrecked from constant pressure and stress. Let him be a kid.

Coaches do not prefer specialized athletes. I see a limited mind and high potential for severe injury.

Do not Fail Mindset: Ruining Us.

Failure is seen as the worst thing that could happen to someone. Why?

This mindset shift has been devastating to our youth. There is good that comes from suffering. There is good that comes from gaining experience through the school of hard knocks.

Suffering allows us to grow in serving others, and for me personally, serving Jesus. Whether we are suffering from the choice we make, or from what others make, there is growth in hardship. Sometimes the best thing you can do is allow someone to fail. 

It's what we do as we suffer, what we examine through hardship, and what we commit to becoming that is important.

There are two excerpts from one of my favorite books, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***.

“Avoiding failure is something we learn at some later point in life. I’m sure a lot of it comes from our education system, which judges rigorously based on performance and punishes those who don’t do well. Another large share of it comes from overbearing or critical parents who don't let their kids screw up on their own often enough and instead punish them for trying anything new or not preordained. And then we have the mass media that constantly encourage us to stellar success after success, while not showing us the thousands of hours of dull practice and tedium that were required to achieve that success.”

He goes on to state that better values (goals) are process oriented. Not finite and focus on you and what you control.

Lovingly, I want my players to embrace pain. Failure will only make them better. I do not want them to be scared of it. Going back to my offensive line story about having the confidence to mess up in front of me. My job is to create that culture. My only expectation is that they keep swinging, keep growing, and keep learning.

“...pain is a part of the process. It's important to feel it. Because if you just chase after highs to cover up the pain, if you continue to indulge in entitlement and delusional positive thinking, if you continue to overindulge in various substances or activities, then you'll never generate the requisite motivation to actually change.”

Good soil produces fruit with endurance.

Let them fail. This is how they will learn, grow, and become better.

Ashley Cornwell with Leander Wiegand (NY Jets) and Jenerio Wakeham (Free Agent).

We can Better of Athletes Mental Health by emphasizing the Process:

Teaching our kids that failure is a part of life will allow them to confidently attack their goals, dreams, and the process uninhibited. It creates resilience, grit, and strength.

Helping them diversify their goals, paths, and exposing them to so many different things will allow them to become who they are, authentically.

Living authentically and having no fear of failure can allow your athletes, your team, and your child to embrace the process of getting better. There, they will find success.

What I am striving to do as a coach is to continue to educate athletes, parents, and other coaches on the importance of encouraging our athletes to have a diverse experience. I encourage all of my offensive linemen to participate in basketball, wrestling, track and field, or other sports to diversify their sports knowledge and movement. And to have a chance of continuing to play in college.

Championing life off the field, building a structure that recognizes failure is inevitable, but does not last forever, and that the process is the best part, is what will help the mental health crisis facing our athletes today.

Process-oriented goals. Trust it.

"³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

-Romans 5: 3-5