It was the first round of the 1974 Major League Baseball draft, and a young Dale Murphy was about to be drafted by the Atlanta Braves. After a successful 20-year career, this beloved athlete’s number was retired, and in 2000, he was inducted into the Braves Hall of Fame.

It takes resilience to achieve this kind of success, and Murphy is no exception. He struggled with baseball and almost quit – more than once. He recently spoke on creating a persevering mindset at the Fishbowl Inventory management + Growth Summit. Keep reading to see Murphy’s advice as well as wisdom from other experts: learn from the past, stay coachable and don’t quit. Striving to develop resilience and perseverance may be just what you need to reach your professional goals.

Learn from the past, but don’t live in it

Don’t beat yourself up for your mistakes; lift yourself up. This is a hard thing to do, especially for any lifelong perfectionists out there. But this paradigm shift is part of a growth mindset that will ultimately lead you to a more successful career.

A good first step to learning from your mistakes is to get a mentor’s perspective. For example, the sales and profits of an insulated beverage cooler company had been declining steadily over the course of several years. The owner had made some mistakes, but didn’t recognize it until an outside business expert helped him see them. Once he saw that he had room for improvement in his people management and marketing skills, he could improve – and his mentor could help him do it effectively.

“You can’t afford to beat yourself up forever,” according to Marcus Lemonis. “A better use of your time is to analyze where you went wrong, figure out how to avoid it next time, and then simply move on. Try writing a report on your business mistakes and letting your team members read it.”

Stay coachable

As a seven-time All-Star, you might think that Murphy’s natural talent was enough to make him successful, at least once he got to a solid point in his career. But, he shared, you will never reach a point where you can’t learn something new. Stay humble, or you will soon be humbled.

Stephanie Vozza, a business writer at http://FastCompany.com, outlines three helpful tips for becoming a more coachable employee:

• Be willing to make improvements that go deeper than beyond surface level.
• Decide on a specific professional goal to pursue. This will sustain your willingness to be coached.
• Have the courage to be vulnerable and recognize when your fears are unfounded. For example, a manager needed to fire someone and kept putting it off. When he dug deeper, he realized “he was afraid of being judged by others for laying someone off,” Vozza said. “He was also afraid he wouldn’t do it right, and he feared he’d ruin the employee’s life.”

Being willing to make deep improvements, pursuing goals and having the courage to be vulnerable can help you stay coachable and keep getting better.

Keep showing up – don’t quit

It took Murphy a few years to find the right position for him. He started out as a catcher, but he lost the ability to be as accurate as he needed to be. He moved to first base and struggled there, too. He wanted to quit a few times, but he persevered, encouraged by a supportive coach. Eventually, he tried the outfield, and everything fell into place. Had he given up, he would never have discovered that being in the outfield was the perfect position for him.

So don’t give up, and you may just find that role that fits you just right.

But what if your goal isn’t right for you? If you feel like your life is on hold because of an unattainable ambition, it may be time to break it down into smaller chunks or switch paths.

“Sometimes we only discover [our strengths] by trying other opportunities that life presents us with,” said Dr. Paulette Sherman, a licensed psychologist. “We see that those other opportunities flow. They create open doors and proffer success, whereas our old dream [makes] us feel stuck and off balance.”

In Murphy’s case, he wanted to play baseball. When being a catcher didn’t work out, he didn’t beat himself up about it; he tried new positions until he found something that flowed. If you have a goal that’s leaving you feeling stuck, consider switching it up a bit so that you keep feeling inspired to move forward.

Whatever your professional ambitions are, striving to develop resilience can help. By learning from the past, staying coachable and showing up without fail, you’ll develop the perseverance to help you succeed.

Jake Goeckeritz is the vice president of marketing at Fishbowl, a manufacturing and warehouse inventory management software company.

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