Learning to win and lose is a life skill

Nobody likes to lose, and nobody likes to see anyone suffer defeat either, and yet, we all lose. Even the best athletes in the world can’t win every race, score with every shot, or defend with 100% success. In the end, we will all suffer from a defeat, whether big or small but it’s how we choose to handle defeat, and it is a choice, that will ultimately determine our relationship with sport and ourselves.

We all react in our own way. Some people react with anger, others with shame and embarrassment, and some with a quiet and respectful dignity. For many, suffering a defeat will be the beginning the end. The pain they feel in defeat will dent their confidence and, for them, the damage to their ego far outweighs the highs they felt in victory.

But there are some who seem to grow from the experience. Some who reflect on their own performance, trying to discover what they could have done to turn things around, trying to work out what they can do, learn, or think, to not let that happen again, and those who hurry away to start practicing for the next time, promising themselves to come back even stronger.

Too often we try to shield our students from the pain of defeat. We try to minimise the risk of the feelings of shame and embarrassment and tailor our lessons to help build confidence for all by assigning them tasks that we know they will find difficult but will get there in the end. But what if, instead of shielding them from defeat, we embraced defeat as a learning opportunity? Teaching all of our students to become one of those who make themself the silent promise to get better next time. To teach them to reflect on their own performance and how they could improve next time, rather than looking externally for reasons or excuses.

For this is how the world works. As these students enter the real world, where work is not about winning and losing per se, but where life is about fighting micro-battles that no-one else sees and the only way to succeed is to try to get a little bit better every day.

Winning and losing is not something to hide from. Rather it’s an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to reflect internally. Ask any successful athlete if they won every race and they’ll say “no”. Ask any CEO if they won every deal and you’ll receive the same answer. What the successful have in common is that they didn’t let their defeats hold them back. In fact, it’s what drove them on to be better next time.