Landon Donovan has suffered through a difficult week, but the U.S. Soccer legend would not allow it to take it down.
Days after being excluded from the U.S. National Team's 23-man roster for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Donovan scored two goals to lead the LA Galaxy to a 4-1 victory over the Philadelphia Union as he took sole possession of the MLS all-time regular season goal scoring record.
In my latest piece for LAGalaxy.com, Landon Donovan talks about the exhausting week and the emotion that comes with breaking the MLS all-time regular season goal scoring record.
But the most telling quote during Donovan's press conference was his thoughts on bouncing back from adversity.
“There’s some things in life you can’t control I’ve said that to you guys a lot of times. There’s a lot of things in life you can’t control. What you can control is how you react and by no means am I going to let one decision that went against me affect me going forward,” said Donovan. “I say that to our young kids all the time, if you make a mistake don’t let that mistake take you out of the rest of the game for the next two weeks for the next two months. You have to get on with it. That’s behind you and that’s living in the past.
It wasn’t easy for me to do that today. My mind was racing all over the place but fortunately I spent a lot of time practicing with how to deal with stuff like that,” Donovan added. “Meditation helps a lot and getting me back to the moment. And getting me present so that you are just here and don’t worry about what’s happened or what’s going to happen and I was really proud of myself for that because it would have been easy to make an excuse today.”
Video of Donovan's curtain call earlier on Sunday is below.
