You need to Lose

So do I. So do we all.

Happy Friday to you all. Prayers for continued recovery in Florida, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. I hope you enjoy my brief diatribe on losing today. Have a great weekend. As always, if you find the essay compelling, hit that like button, considering a subscription, and I’d love to hear your comments on the topic.

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You learn things about yourself by winning. You learn more when you lose. Winning builds complacency. Losing builds resilience. You need to lose more than you need to win.

Y.A. Tittle, NY Giants QB

This essay is not about loss as it relates to losing loved ones or pets to death—or homes to weather disasters. I’m not talking today about grief.

Grief sucks—it never goes away—and we all deal with it in different and unpredictable ways.

I’m talking about losing.

Losing a contest. An argument. A game or match. An election. Being presented with a losing outcome of something that you hoped to win—that you were sure you would win—that you did everything within your power and control to win—and yet you still lose.

Two distinct currents compelled me to write about this today. The pending US election. The fall sports lineup. There are a lot of crosscurrents in both.

The strong fandom.

The rabid affiliation with one side or another.

The validation we get from being a part of this team vs. that other team.

The belief that a favorable outcome will somehow make your life better—more enjoyable.

Losing isn’t popular in our culture.

Nice guys finish last.

Better luck next time.

Losers never win.

If you can accept losing, you can’t win. Vince Lombardi

But let’s look at the reality of our winning culture. Don’t we secretly hate the perennial winners? Who doesn’t hate Brady’s Patriots except for their fans? The Mahome’s Chiefs? The billion-dollar payroll Dodgers? Jeter’s Yankees? The billionaire elite? Many of these teams we hate are still living off their winning streak from a decade or more ago. And we still hate them.

Don’t we secretly love the guy who has fallen flat on his face—in a very public way—and rises like a phoenix to win again?

Don’t we love the resilience—and bounce-back—and the never say-die attitude? That only comes from getting your ass kicked in the first place.

Not everyone builds that resilience. Some losers develop bitterness. They simply can’t accept that they lost—somebody must have cheated to beat them. Dammit! They were entitled to win. How could that be taken from them? Those people never grow from losing. They stay rooted in the same place—telling everyone who might listen how they were robbed. See Hilary Clinton. See Donald Trump. See Stacy Abrams.

See the losers who fill the streets with their signs and their tears and their rage.

The person who can freely acknowledge that life is full of difficulties can be free, because they are acknowledging the nature of life—that it can’t be much else. Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind—Beginner’s Mind

Epictetus wrote: It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

The Stoics were pretty firm on that part in their philosophy. It definitely matters what happens to you if you’re in a war—or a natural weather disaster—or an emergency situation that could potentially be fatal. My Substack friend

Sam Alaimo

writes quite a bit about this. He has been in war zones under constant threat of dying. He writes much about the Stoics. Even—or especially—in that life-threatening situation it matters how you react.

It is a luxury to live in a mostly peaceful society. We should be extremely grateful for that and respect the cost paid to have that. All we need do is look at the world around us and know that it could be different. That important statement made, we live in a world of expected safety and built-in complacency. We rarely face real, life-threatening danger. The fight, flight, or freeze response of our sympathetic nervous systems has been reduced to mostly low-level and free-floating anxiety. We don’t face danger in real life, so we assign a high importance to everyday, inconsequential things we face.

In this environment—how we respond and react is what shows—it’s what we’re made of. Think of nearly any crisis in recent times. The reaction and response has been worse than the thing itself. Every single fucking time. My observation would be that if we’re being judged on our responses and reactions—we have failed miserably.

Many of us are so risk-averse we only play when we know we can win. We only participate if the group and the momentum is big enough and strong enough to protect us in the—God forbid—possibility that we lose.

This is called jumping on the bandwagon. Ever wonder where that little colloquial idiom came from?

Phineas Barnum is attributed with it—often called the greatest showman in history.

Theodore Roosevelt once used it in political terms: When I once became sure of one majority they tumbled over each other to get aboard the bandwagon.

Sports—and politics—are full of fans who wait—and wait—until the bet becomes more correct—more fashionable—more sure—to win before they clamber aboard and profess their undying love.

What? I’ve always been a huge fan of that guy—at least since I found out about him a week ago.

Whaddya mean? I’ve rooted for that team since at least two games ago.

And when they and their fellow safe bettors lose—the shit hits the fan.

Part of the reason I love baseball hitters is that losing is built right into the equation up front. Professional baseball players who fail 7 times out of 10 generally lead the league in hitting. If they do it consistently enough, they’re in the Hall of Fame.

What if your entire life was based on an equation like that?

Would you make different decisions if you knew that only two or three of your ten hunches—your ten swings—your ten best-informed decisions—would end up working out?

Sales professionals of years past were taught that they needed to hear 5-7 Nos before they finally heard a yes. No one makes cold calls anymore—in fact does anyone prospect anymore? The point is that you go out and do. Give it the best, well-trained, well-intentioned effort that you can.

Personally I’ve done both in my life. I’ve played it safe and I’ve taken huge cuts at the ball. Sometimes I’m not conscious of which one it is. I’ve always been relatively fearless and a tad reckless—certainly during my youth. So logically it follows that I’ve hit a bunch of base hits—crushed a homer or two—and mostly struck out—a lot. But I struck out swinging—not looking. It is critical to say that I’ve learned a lot more from the strikeouts.

Outcomes aren’t within our control. No matter how much we strive and wish it to be so, there are forces outside of our control that determine outcomes.

Effort and choices are within our control. Give it everything you can. Take a big swing. Pray and hope for an outcome in your favor. Then—accept the outcome. You will win occasionally. Be a gracious winner. Things went your way this time. You will lose more often. Learn from your losses. Move on to the next challenge.

Acceptance is the key.

So much of the disappointment in life is a result of our expectations, our entitlement, and our grandiose opinions of our own self-worth.

Go forth and lose.