When I was a teenager, I spent many a Friday night playing Madden with my friends.
(Madden, for those who don’t know, is a video game simulation of the National Football League.)
And whenever we played, we made sure to follow one particular rule: Don’t Punt.
Why? Because only wimps punt in Madden.
This, of course, is ridiculous. Punting — or dropkicking the ball down the field to pin your opponent close to their own goal line — is an odd quirk of football. But it’s also a strategic one.
In fact, teams with weak offenses and dominant defenses use punting as a strategic advantage — as it can be difficult for opponents to score points when they need to go the length of the football field to it. The 2000 Baltimore Ravens even won a Super Bowl championship with this formula.
But punting is unacceptable in Madden. It’s part of guy code. Which is also the code that demands that a man leave a one urinal buffer between himself and the next guy while relieving himself in a public restroom.
(And yes, I do realize there are plenty of female gamers out there today. But this Madden tradition goes back to when video games were “a guy thing.”)
So, we never punted in Madden. Instead, we gave each other short fields when our offense sputtered. We scored a lot of points. We had a grand old time.
Then, when the game was over, we turned off the console, went to the kitchen and downed glasses of Cola-Cola.
Of course, life’s nothing like Madden. It ain’t a game, it ain’t always fun, and you can’t just turn it off at the end. (It does, however, feature bountiful amounts of Coca-Cola.)
But I do think the Don’t Punt rule should still apply to life.
Why? Because off the gridiron, punting is not a strategic advantage. It’s bailing out, giving up, abandoning ship.
It’s acknowledging that something didn’t work — and cutting all ties with it in that same instant.
I get why people do this. Sometimes it’s just better to have a fresh start than to let a poor experience weigh you down like a boulder.
But still, it’s incredibly shortsighted.
You see, I’m a firm believer that something can be gained from every experience we encounter in our lives. But we have to go out and seize those lessons and that silver lining.
Punting doesn’t allow us to do this. It shuts out an initiative that didn’t go to plan, effectively expunging it from our life story.
While it’s more comfortable for us to face failure this way, punting away our misses leaves a silent trail of collateral damage. All of the effort, time and heart that was poured into an experience is lost forever — and those losses compound over time. This can lead to “Golden Years” pockmarked with emptiness and anchored by regret.
It’s far better to pivot than to punt. Pivoting ensures continuity between one venture and the next. It allows us to build off of our prior experiences — good or bad — and create a future that’s continually vibrant and well informed.
This is a worthy goal to strive for. And all we need to achieve it is the right mindset.
So, when you fail, take a moment. Collect yourself. Then, get up and dust yourself off.
But whatever you do, don’t punt.