A few summers ago, during the WTA tennis tournament at Eastbourne, Britain’s former number 1, Johanna Konta, touched upon the psychology of learning to lose.
How do we cope when either fate, Lady Luck or just plain circumstance, deal us a body blow.
Here are some ideas to help us.
Start by learning how to lose well.
If we don’t, our stress levels remain high and are amplified by constant rumination about the loss – Stress and Protect
How do we get out of Stress and Protect mode?
Socialise – one of the best ways to move from high stress to normal is to debrief among friends. Social recovery flips us into a positive state.
This helps in two ways.
Having social support dampens stress and pushes us towards affiliative instead of avoidance behaviours. We are in a place where we are willing to maintain social and emotional bonds with others.
It also gives us time to work through our losing experience with people who are supportive and not threatening.
Diversify Your Meaning – losing attacks your status and sense of self, especially if you lose at something that is deeply intertwined with your being or core beliefs.
We tend to think we need to be all-in to accomplish anything. But the reality is, going all-in all the time makes us fragile. We are far better off if we diversify our roles in life to move to a state where the source of our loss is not the only thing that is important.
When we put all our eggs in one basket it pushes us towards fear of failure, which is a much more vulnerable state of mind and one that often pushes us towards desperation. We all play multiple different roles in our lives. After a hard failure, it’s time to put on another hat!
Before we get to the end of a busy day and to the stage of either meeting up with friends or diversifying our meaning, there are simple tools we can use to help improve our responses to losing streaks in business.
Paradoxically, losing cleanly, honestly and quickly offers us a feeling of strength, the opportunity to learn, and a sense of inner peace.
These ideas might help:
- Practice losing – Treat every new skirmish as an opportunity to lose better. Don’t wait for the big ones – try it out during the small moments of life. The practice will help you for bigger battles to come. Use Google as an example. They experiment with new product ideas on a grand scale and fail fast and often when a decision is taken to cut and run on an initiative.
- Develop losing language – Fess up when you realise someone else is right. Notice the words you immediately go for when you feel your advantage slipping. Having good, clear losing vocabulary at the ready will help you lose more easily.
- Take ownership – Taking blame for the loss helps us build inner strength while at the same time, it’s important to not beat ourselves up.
- Model losing – Lose gracefully in front of others. Show the people around us that we can survive the blow. Once again, it’s a paradox – it will show them how strong we really are.
“When you take risks, you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” – Ellen DeGeneres
Thank you for reading. Enjoy your successes!
