By Basheer Luqman Olarewaju
In today’s column on People in the Spotlight, it is pertinent to bring to live the decaying mental wellness as a result of unsolicited and unsuspecting failure experienced on the route to breakthrough: Losing sucks, it’s true. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t speaking honestly – or else they’re engaging in self-delusion. No one likes to lose, whether it’s at a competition in sports, at work, in school, in politics, at home, or among friends. Failing to get the promotion you’ve worked hard for also hurts. But is there a way to turn losing around, to actually win again?
It’s not losing if you learn something: If anybody loses at one time or another, the key is to profit from the experience. If all you do is grouse over your bad luck or just the wrong timing, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Figure out what went wrong and learn from it. As long as you come away with a better understanding of what caused this failure, you’re one step ahead when it comes to doing it better the next time. Already you’ve turned a loss into the first part of a win.
Failure can spur you to renew your commitment: How much do you want to succeed at the action or endeavor you just failed at? With the right mindset – really wanting the successful outcome – you can rededicate yourself and renew your commitment to the goal. This is part of what it takes to develop a winning strategy and reinforce a winning mentality. You can shoot me on mail ([email protected]) for consultancy services.
After you lose, call on your strengths: Losing isn’t pleasant nor sweet in the best of times. In the worst of times, losing can seem like the world is against you. Don’t fall prey to that self-defeating line of thinking. Instead, list your strengths and begin to make use of them. Some, no doubt, are strengths you haven’t used for a long time, maybe never. This is the time to call on your strengths, for they will help you reinvigorate your willingness to keep going, to challenge yourself to win again.
Remember you never give up: This isn’t the first time you’ve been on the losing end of a situation. Even if this is your first recorded loss, the point is that you know it’s not in you to give up. Those little hurdles you put forth such effort to overcome and kept on going despite how tough it was? Those were little losses, but you remained steadfast and refused to give up. You will win again with this can-do attitude. Keep at it and you’ll be there at the finish line before you know it.
Let me reiterate that, competition makes you sharp. If everyone had the same amount of talent and ability, the world would be a boring place. Thankfully, there’s competition. When you see what others do, especially when you’re engaged competitively in the same endeavor or pursuit, this tends to sharpen your skills, amplify your determination and motivation, and keeps you engaged. Do you want to succeed? Are you in it to win? Pay attention to your competition, even the competition you instill in yourself, and you’ll soon win again.
Once you’ve lost, you have greater compassion – because you know how it feels. No one likes an arrogant winner. It takes humility – losing – to realize how it feels not to succeed. Since you have lost, you now know how the other person feels. This helps make you a better person, one with compassion and empathy. When you’re once again in the winner’s circle, this compassion will help keep your inflated ego at bay.
Look at the broader picture to gain perspective. It may be tough to see much past the recent loss. Yet that’s exactly what you need to do after you lose. You’re never going to be motivated to continue if you can’t gain some perspective, to see the broader picture. Your world isn’t a narrow confine or a box you can’t get out of. It’s wide open and waiting for you to discover. This should be enough to inspire and motivate you to keep going, to recognize that this most recent loss is but one step along the path to success.
Realize that you’re already invested. You’ve already put a great deal of effort into what just didn’t work out so well. In this, you’re already invested. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to profit from the effort you’ve already put forth and find new ways of approaching the task, project, pursuit or endeavor. Raphael Alvies says, “refresh your memory with what worked well before and modify or adapt those strategies and techniques to the task at hand”.
Remember, sharing experiences with your network can help you gain new insights. Maybe what you need is a different set of eyes and ears. By sharing your experience – the recent loss – with your network, you might learn a few things that can help you get back to winning. I have learned a lot from a mentor, Mohammed Abdullahi , he once said, “Often it’s just this type of interpersonal communication, talking over what happened and listening to suggestions and techniques that worked for others is enough to get you back on track to winning again. That loss also won’t feel as painful when you listen to how others came back from losing”.
Be sure to hold on to your dreams: In the darkest times, what keeps us going are our dreams. Those long-held and dearly prized dreams are nature’s way of pushing us to keep going, especially when things look the least favorable. Maybe your dream takes a little longer to achieve or realize, but as long as you hold fast to it and take the small steps toward achieving it, you’re making progress. This is a sign that you’re a winner, even though you may have lost a thousand times before and likely will again. Hold fast to that dream and you will achieve it.
