Does anyone like to lose? It seems to me that the need to win is inside all of us. We are born with it. When we are young, the definition of winning is very simple. We win whenever we get what we want, when we want it.
What do young children do when they don’t get what they want? They usually cry. They cry like babies. They don’t think about anything else other than the fact that they didn’t “win” because they didn’t get what they wanted. When we’re young, the realization that we’ve lost is usually short lived, as we soon forget what we were crying about because our attention is redirected toward something else we want.
As we get older, the need to win refines itself and becomes a little more sophisticated. Winning can still be defined as getting what you want from the world, but the competition becomes more personal. Maybe what changes the most is our ability to give consideration to what we want and to what length we are willing to go to get it. As we mature, we gain the ability to understand that winning at all costs is rarely the right way to proceed.
As we grow to adulthood, not all of us have the same need to win. While the “win at all cost” mentality lives in the soul of many, most of us find an equilibrium where we put limits on what we do to win. The need to win will make people lie, cheat and steal. They often will do things that they never really imagined they would do, simply in pursuit of winning.
What experience teaches us is that winning all the time can be bad. If you never lose, then you don’t learn how to lose. Sometimes, the worst losers are those that think that they deserve to win. No one truly deserves to win.
Knowing how to lose is important on a number of fronts. Losing teaches us how to win in the future. There are a multitude of lessons that can be learned from losing. Those that don’t recognize the learning opportunities of losing, by definition, don’t learn. Therefore, they really lose twice. Most importantly, if you don’t learn how to lose and move on, then you might be setting yourself up to lose again.
For everyone that wins, someone loses. In the simplest terms, it’s a zero-sum game. Truth is, for every winner, there are often many losers. Winning is tough and not guaranteed to everyone every time. For most of us, winning comes because we keep trying, and we do the right things while we are trying to win.
It’s my personal opinion that we always win when we try and do our best. We might not get a medal for doing our best, but the competition is ultimately within ourselves. We measure up to others, but we compete with ourselves.
When you lose, be gracious and pick yourself up. Strive to do better next time. When you win, be humble because your time is coming. That’s good advice for everyone, especially those of us way up in the CHEAP SEATS!
Bill James is a criminal defense lawyer and co founder of the James Law Firm with offices in Little Rock, Conway, and Fayetteville, Ark. He may be contacted at Bill@JamesFirm.com.