In order to be the next great female hockey player, you have to be willing to work hard. But even more importantly, you have to be willing to fail. And I am talking about “fall down flat on your face type of failure”.

There is nothing worth achieving that comes easy. Those players who have reached the highest levels of women’s hockey have gotten there because of their willingness to challenge themselves today to be better than they were yesterday.

You have to push the envelope and put yourself out on the line each and every day in order to get better. That doesn’t mean that you need to be training every minute of every day, but you do need to be pushing yourself as hard as you possibly can when you are training on and off the ice in order to really improve.

There are going to be times that you try out a new move and it fails miserably. There are going to be training sessions where you feel weak, tired and just plain uncoordinated. At some point in your hockey career, you are going to get cut. Hockey is a game of mistakes and failure is lurking around every corner.

You always have the choice to take the easy road or take the much more challenging path to success. My favorite quote of all time is, “If you do what you’ve always done, you are going to get what you’ve always had”. In order to get more out of yourself and take your game to the next level, you have to be willing to fail. Every time you fail, you have an awesome opportunity to learn from your mistakes and become a better player. You might fall flat on your face 9 times out of 10. But that one time where you succeed will be well worth it.

Don’t be scared of failing. Be scared of not improving. Be scared of being the exact same calibre of player this season as you were last year.

Are you willing to put yourself in a position where you might fail? What have you been scared to try? If you are ready to take your game to the next level, share your plan for how you are going to push the envelope and put yourself out on there. I promise you that the effort will be well worth it.