Learning To Lose - Why it is Necessary for Your Success

Why you must learn to lose if you want to be a winner

Winning and losing are two sides of the same coin. In life, you cannot always win, and failures and setbacks are part of the process of achieving success. While many people focus only on winning, it is equally important to learn how to lose gracefully and develop a system to deal with failures. In this article, we will discuss why learning to lose is essential for success, how to develop a routine for dealing with failures, and the importance of staying focused and positive even in the face of setbacks.

This sounds counterproductive, why should you learn to lose, why not just focus your energy on winning? I am not saying you shouldn’t focus your attention on winning, but what I am referring to here is having a plan or some type of system that you can rely on when you do happen to lose, a plan that will keep you in the running so that you can eventually win.

What is the first thing that you do if you are running and suddenly slip?

You extend your arms in front of you, with your open palms facing forward. This is exactly what I teach any novice joining me on a trail run for the first time.

Falling on your hands ensures that your hands and arms take the brunt of the impact, as opposed to your head if you were not to extend your arms forward when falling.

In the same light, you want to learn how to lose and fail in life, you want to protect yourself from any adverse outcome that could knock you out of the ‘game’. So when pursuing your major goals, you want to create a plan of action you can rely on should you not get the results that you seek.

Every time you play to win, you also put yourself in a position to lose. Think about sports competitions, only one team or player walks away with the trophy while the rest of the competitors walk away losing. Sports is a zero sum game with only one person or team crowned the winner. Remember the team that lost this year can be crowned the champions next year. Likewise, failing at a project or goal doesn’t mean you next one can’t be a success. But in order to take advantage of the next opportunity to succeed, you want to learn how to navigate and mitigate the negative elements of losing and failing.

One of my core teachings when working with professional athletes is teaching them how to lose – what to do when they do lose. We work through how they process loss, what they do directly after, how long they give themselves to mourn the loss and feel sorry for themselves. A typical losing routine looks something like this; they accept the results, clear their head, go to their hotel to watch tapes of the game replay so that they can identify areas to work on, get a good night’s rest and return to training the next day with renewed hope and excitement for their next opportunity to win. This is what I mean when I say you need to know how to lose, you need to have a system in place that ensures that the loss does not break your spirits - that you are able to bounce back stronger and smarter.

If we are seeking exceptional results in life, we must also be willing to anticipate and prepare for the ‘what ifs’.

Think of the salesperson getting turned away, that rejection brings him or her closer to getting their next sale. But some will take the rejection personally and start to think that maybe they are not cut out for this type of work, leading them to throw in the towel on their career in sales.

I recently spoke to a friend who runs a real estate company in South East Asia about how he deals with rejection and failure. He told me that he has learned that a deal is only closed one the deposit is paid into his account, since he had clients pull out on the last minute before - this helps him not to celebrate the deal prematurely. This is one of the strategies that forms part of his ‘losing routine’.

Anyone who is in business or sales can relate to an instance when they got excited and thought it was a ‘done deal’, only for the client to withdraw their offer.

What I have learned is that there is nothing wrong with failing and losing, and that you have to remove the emotional component of losing – You have to change the way you see a loss. See it as an opportunity to learn and try again. One way to remove the emotional component is to remind yourself that losing doesn’t define you, but giving up does. You can even go further and remind yourself that champions lose, entrepreneurs fail but they are still winners. Take Elon Musk and Space X for example, they had three failed launches before successfully achieving its first orbital spaceflight with the Falcon 1 rocket in September 2008.

Another important lesson that I have learned about losing and failure is that it grounds us, it teaches us humility, but more importantly, it forces us to evolve. Losing will force you to confront the objective reality of your results – and in order to achieve the results that you truly desire, you have to be willing to confront some harsh truths and to evolve. Often you have to evolve your thinking, your strategy, level up your skills, and so forth, in order to be successful in your next attempt.

This is one of the reasons high achievers out-develop and out-grow their non-achiever counterparts.

Remind yourself that you are playing to win, that you are giving your all to reaching your goal, and that the failures are simply your ‘growth multiplier’.

To be successful, you need to develop a winning mindset that embraces both success and failure. While winning is undoubtedly essential, it is equally important to learn how to lose and develop resilience in the face of setbacks. By learning to lose gracefully, you can develop a system to deal with failures and come back stronger and smarter. Remember, losing is not the opposite of winning, it is part of the journey towards success. So embrace your failures, learn from them, and use them to fuel your drive to succeed.