Winning by losing

Men's Fitness, August, 1998 by Sam Dunn

Defeat doesn't have to be agony - if you can make it a learning experience

Why lie about it? Losing sucks. Nobody likes to lose, whether it's in work, politics, sports or love. Ask the Chicago Cubs, who haven't won a World Series since 1908. Ask incarcerated-for-life John Gotti, who lost control of his hoodlum empire. Ask singer Lyle Lovett, who loved and lost fickle Julia Roberts.

However, here's an angle you may not have considered: Losing can actually be good for you. Losing takes you by the throat and says, "Listen, doofus, there are a few things you need to reconsider." It demands that you take a fresh look at your faults and misguided expectations. In fact, if you're ready to learn from it, the experience of losing can help turn you into a winner. As Walter Anderson writes in The Confidence Course (HarperCollins, $13), "True success is always the last of a string of failed attempts to get it right."

Now, at some point in life, you probably got the idea that you're supposed to win all the time. Society encourages men to be competitive in whatever they do, both professionally and personally, notes Scott Hall, PhD, an assistant professor in the counselor education department at the University of Dayton who specializes in men's issues. "It tends to be all or nothing, black or white," Hall says. Yet the most successful people stress the process of winning rather than the end results. For instance, basketball players like Michael Jordan are extremely competitive but seem primarily motivated by a love of the game. They want to win, but more than anything, they want to play.

That's not to say that you shouldn't care about the quality of your performance. Nobody goes into anything looking to lose, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to succeed in whatever you do. "This becomes a problem, though, when the outcome isn't what you want and you judge your worth as a person based on that," notes Hall. In other words, the question isn't whether you win or lose - it's whether you're willing to accept some losses now so you can get better in the future.

Learning from a loss

"You are going to face adversity; the problem is how you'll respond to it when it happens," says Edd Wilbanks, EdD, a Louisiana-based sports psychologist and spokesman for the American Counseling Association. "We can't win all the time, in the sporting arena or in life. How are we supposed to plan for that?"

Boston-based sports psychologist Harvey Dulberg, PhD, says a loss can actually help you become more receptive to new information. "Let's face it," he says, "after a win, you're too impressed with yourself to hear anything. Guys who win all the time may not reach their potential if they never step out of their comfort zone and challenge themselves."

That was the problem faced by Richard Machowicz, a 10-year veteran of the ultra-elite Navy SEALs and founder of the Bukido Institute in Marina del Rey, California, when he almost blew his career through overconfidence. "Part of the screening test for the SEALs was swimming. I thought, I grew up in Miami, no problem. Well, during the training session, I didn't swim 300 yards before I was done. I mean, not only did I fail, I was horrible. But if I didn't pass the swimming, there was no way I could become a SEAL." So Machowicz took that failed attempt as a starting point. Every day for two weeks, he swam until he could breaststroke a mile and crush the qualifying time by at least a minute. In the end, he did more than turn that loss into a win: "I was the only person left at the end of the swimming round, and I was the only one from my group who passed the screening," Machowicz recalls. "That loss taught me that whatever I put my energy into, I would get out [from it] what I wanted."

Losing like a winner

So, what can you do to help turn a losing situation around? You can start by throwing a tantrum. Pout and piss and moan. Then, once you've gotten that out of your system, forget about it. "When I lose a ballgame, I have a pretty foul mouth coming off the field," admits Dulberg. "You should look at it as a purge. Then put it behind you."

That may be easier said than done, but being aware of your anger or disappointment can help you turn negatives into positives. "Recognize the fact that you have to let go," Dulberg says. "Ask yourself how dwelling on this will move you forward. If you can come up with one good reason, dwell on it all day. But if you're really honest, you won't be able to." After that, he says, give yourself a specific amount of time - 10 minutes, half an hour - to throw yourself a pity party. Keep your bitching specific: "I feel bad about missing that goal," or "I can't believe I didn't bring those notes to the meeting." (But don't lapse into general, self-defeating, negative self-talk, like "I'm such a loser!")

Next, move on to the hard part: learning from the situation. "We seldom, if ever, have any control over outcomes. What we have control over is the process," says Wilbanks. "If you went out and attained your personal goals, even if you still lost, so what? The guy who got the job you wanted may have been better qualified than you, the girl who turned you down may have had a boyfriend - that's the part you can't control. That's not a life-killer. What's a like-killer is when you go out and get your head handed to you over and over again and never stop to ask, 'Why?'" Yet if you're willing to dig into the reasons you lost, Wilbanks adds, you'll eventually overcome them. (For help in doing this, check out our loser's questionnaire on the facing page.)