Thirteen cuts, one lesson

My name is Jedidiah Gabriel Collins, and I am a great failure.

I say that on stage and people laugh, because they've read the bio: seven NFL seasons, a starting job in New Orleans, a top-two grade at my position. What the bio doesn't say is how I got there. I was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2008 and then I was cut. And cut. And cut. Thirteen times, by teams in Philadelphia, Chicago, Kansas City, Arizona, Cleveland and Tennessee, before the Saints gave me a locker I got to keep.

What a cut actually sounds like

You get a phone call, or a knock, and someone says "Coach wants to see you — bring your playbook." That's it. There's no explanation you'd accept. You pack a duffel, you fly home, and you sit with the one question that matters: is that it?

The first few times, I heard the cut as a verdict. A grade on the whole person. The football world had reviewed my file and stamped it.

Somewhere around the ninth, something changed — not in the league, in me. I started writing after every release. Not journaling in the inspirational sense; more like a scouting report on myself. What did I do well? What was the actual reason? What is the one thing I can fix before the next workout?

The verdict became a question. And a question is something you can work on.

F.A.I.L.

Years later I gave that shift a name, mostly so I could teach it to people who'd never set foot on a practice field: First Attempt In Learning.

It's a reframe, not a platitude. The word "fail" still means what it means — you didn't get the outcome. But "first attempt" adds two things the verdict leaves out. It says there will be another attempt. And it says the gap between this one and that one is learning, which is a job you can start today.

Failure is a final verdict only if you stop attempting.

The scouting report

If you want to try this, here's the exact structure I used, and still use — after a talk that didn't land, a quarter that missed, a conversation I handled badly.

1. What happened. One paragraph, no adjectives. Just the play.
2. What I controlled. Be honest here. Some of it wasn't yours. Most of it was.
3. The one thing. Not five things. The single change that would have made the biggest difference.
4. The next attempt. When is it, and what will I do differently?

Four boxes. Ten minutes. It turned thirteen cuts into thirteen drafts of a better player, and it's the whole reason a team eventually stopped calling me into the office.

You are going to get cut from something. A job, a deal, a relationship, a roster. When it happens, don't ask whether that's it. Ask what the first attempt taught you — then write it down before the feeling fades.