Mintridge Presentation and Q&A Programme with Liz Cann at Prior’s Field School.
“Fail your way to success”, was one of the main themes that Liz Cann mentioned throughout her presentation and Q&A programme when we went back to virtually visit the Sports Scholars at Prior’s Field School. As part of our series of presentations with the Sports Scholars, Liz covered a range of topics to help support the students on their own journeys.
As a former professional badminton player and having competed at the Commonwealth Games, Liz has experienced some incredible highs in her career and has often had to change the plan or fail a lot on her journey to be successful.
During her youth, Liz had to work with a very small network in order to progress in her sport and also rely a lot on her family to get her to competitions and training. This was certainly something that the Scholars at Prior’s Field could really relate to and something that allowed them to recognise how the people around them influence their life and sporting success.
However, like most successful journeys, Liz’s hasn’t been without challenging setbacks to balance out the incredible highs. Liz, like many athletes, missed out on medals at major competitions, has experienced increasing amounts of pressure at major tournaments and struggled when dealing with external influences on her performances. Liz was perfectly placed to chat to the students about how a change in mindset and controlling the controllable elements of your game, can really help and positively influence your journey and the outcomes along the way.
Lots of the students could relate to Liz’s feelings and the nerves she felt in a medal winning play off, and how the negative thoughts can sometimes get in the way of your performance. It was incredibly beneficial for the students to hear how Liz has overcome those feelings and setbacks to achieve even greater things on her journey.
“There is a difference between motivation and inspiration. When you find out what motivates you and you really harness that and then surround yourself with people that inspire you, you will go on to achieve whatever you set your mind to.”
Liz really wanted the students to think about some key questions that she put to them, that can hopefully help them when they are faced with a high pressure scenario or doubting themselves at a major competition.
