Stuart Lancaster says dealing with his high profile England departure has given him "armour" to cope with disappointment with Leinster.
But the Blues senior coach admits that he sometimes questions his sanity for choosing to coach in rugby due to the "grey areas" that can impact results.
Speaking to the podcast TritonLake Performs following Leinster's Champions Cup final defeat to La Rochelle and before the URC semi-final loss to the Bulls, the former England head coach revealed how he deals with big game failures.
"If you can't sort yourself out first, you're not going to lead other people," said the 52-year-old.
"I think I've tried to maintain an even keel in what's a pretty choppy environment.
"Rugby's a sport where...there's not many sports like it, where subjectivity and the judgement of a referee can ultimately influence the outcome - more so than any other sport I know.
"The grey areas within the sport - 'the bounce of a ball' is the classic quote - is definitely a factor in rugby and that definitely has a bearing on the outcome.
"So it puts you in a very uncomfortable position when you're not in control of the outcome.
"You are giving the players the responsibility to go out and play and ultimately you take the responsibility if they win or lose.
"But in rugby, more so than in soccer or cricket or American Football, where there are multiple cameras and six referees, there's a lot more grey.
"So sometimes I question my sanity about the sport I've chosen to coach in, but I've learned to....if you imagine a big wave, the dip is the defeat and the peak is the victory.
"It's trying to maintain an even keel through those dips and peaks but also making sure you enjoy those moments when you win, when you succeed, when a young player comes through and achieves success.
"But when it goes the other way, the disappointment of defeat is so acute you need to protect yourself a little bit and those around you by understanding it's not just on you."
Lancaster was credited with changing the culture of the England Test set-up when he came on board after the 2011 World Cup.
But he left the hot-seat four years later after the World Cup hosts crashed and burned - failing to even make the quarter-finals - before joining Leinster in September 2016.
"Like, I definitely beat myself up after the World Cup in 2015 and it was a very tough, lonely existence on my own," Lancaster said.
"I felt, 'England went on to be successful, I decided to go to South Africa, New Zealand and Australia' and I put a positive slant on it.
"But the reality was I spent a lot of time on planes on my own and in hotels on my own and just thinking about, 'what if, what if, what if'."
Reflecting on his final days with England, Lancaster recalled: "I was the leader, I was in charge. It was on my watch.
"I think it would have been a failure of leadership if I had turned around and abdicated responsibility or blamed someone else.
"I cared about the environment, I cared about the people and cared about doing a good job for the country.
"So it's acute and it gives you a bit of a coat of armour for the next time around but it doesn't protect you permanently.
"I spoke to the players about the defeat in the Champions Cup final and a coach said to me once it's like a scar that you have that never truly heals but what does help is winning the next game and the next game and the next game.
"The black and white nature of sport means that we might lose this weekend but might lose next week's semi-final or the final."
Addressing how he tries to motivate players after defeat on the big stage, Lancaster replied: "You just work hard.
"You go back to rolling your sleeves up, trying to help and inspire the group, trying to re-motivate and explain away the defeat with things they can tangibly do to improve.
"You try to get from what was the problem to what is the solution the next time and try to give examples of where people have succeeded after failure and you use failure as a tool to re-motivate and re-energise
"But it's tough, you've got to go through that grief cycle of defeat but you've got to get out of it quick because there's another game coming around the corner.
"We've got a phrase, 'Sumo' - 'shut up and move on' and it's a discipline as well, to realise while you feel everyone out there is judging you, most people, even passionate supporters, have moved on.
"But that doesn't make it any easier to take."
Leinster's series of defeats in crucial play-off games in recent years, culminating in the La Rochelle and Bulls losses, has highlighted how the Blues have struggled against bigger, more physical teams.
The senior coach touched on the issue when he said: "While I'm not in charge of the gym programme, I make sure that the players who train at Leinster are super-fit and can play the game at the pace and tempo we want to play with.
"The genetic profile of the players in Ireland is not the same as the southern hemisphere, for example, we don't have that profile.
"So we're never going to have the power that sometimes other teams will have so therefore we need to have pace, skill and finesse, really, that's the idea.
"Trying to flip between the different styles, someone said to me it's like picking the right golf club at the right time and I think that's the art of good leadership and good coaching."
To listen to the fifth episode of TritonLake Perform with Stuart Lancaster, click here: https://www.tritonlake.com/perform
The first four episodes of TritonLake Perform, featuring Head Coach of La Rochelle, Ronan O’Gara, Ireland Men’s Sevens Captain and Olympian, Billy Dardis, Ireland Women’s Sevens Captain, Lucy Mulhall, and the High Performance Director of the Irish Rugby Football Union, David Nucifora, are also available to listen back on.
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