Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning isn’t everything. It is the only thing.” Many people charge me with being the most competitive person they have ever met - well, they obviously have not met my business partner J. That is certainly a title I have probably earned. However, I do like to think that during my life I have learned from losing. My parents worked hard to instill in me the importance of learning from losing.
The difference between winners and losers is not that winners never lose. The difference is that winners learn from losing, and losers do not. As a result, winners lose less in the future and do not lose the same way they lost last time, because they have learned from the loss and do not repeat the pattern. But losers do not learn from what they did and tend to carry that loss or pattern forward in the next venture, or relationship, and repeat the same way of losing. Therefore, they do not become people who lose, as does everyone, but they become people who never win because they do the same things over and over that led to their last loss.
In life we all have times that we lose. It is impossible to win all the time. But in learning how to lose, you can create a winning strategy.
In losing we can learn how to better prepare for winning – Winning can lead to an expectation of winning, which is good. But at the same time regular winning can make us lazy and we forget how much preparation went into winning - A Hubris Born of Success. Losing can get us to go back to the basics in our preparation and teach us the importance of perseverance.
In losing we can learn how to keep our emotions from controlling us – Nothing is worse than a sore loser who is totally negative. Sometimes we need to lose in order to learn some humility. It can make us appreciate winning so much more.
In losing we can learn that tomorrow is another day – Losing can help teach us the importance of living to play another day and the hope of tomorrow.
I would love to hear from all of you, what have you learned from losing?
Losing teaches us how to improve upon skills we already possess. Those who can take losing and turn it into a learning experience are more likely to come out as winners in the end.
Tessa Carroll
www.blogs.vbpoutsourcing.com
Posted by: Tessa Carroll | March 23, 2010 at 10:39 AM
I guess it is just human nature, but when we are winning we assume we're doing everything right so there is no need for self examination. Unless you lose and give up, losing means picking yourself up and trying to figure how to do better next time. In my business the biggest breakthroughs came at those times when it seemed we had failed and had to come up with a different approach.
Posted by: Ed Wielage | March 23, 2010 at 06:11 PM