Lose like a Champion
Lose Like a Champion
Last weekend was a bleak one for South African sporting fans. One of the worst in recent history.
The Proteas lost a T20 international against Australia on the last ball of the innings. The Springboks were humbled by the Wallabies, who scored 38 unanswered points, securing a win at Ellis Park for the first time in 62 years. Dricus du Plessis lost his UFC middleweight title to the bearded Khamzat Chimaev from Russia in a very one-sided display. And Bafana Bafana blew a 3-1 lead to draw with Uganda, which felt like a loss.
Losing stings. I am no fan of it. Even after losing a friendly padel match, I’m likely to spend the rest of the day thinking about what I could have done differently.
If there is one thing worse than losing, it is being a bad loser. I like those even less. You know the kind: They lose their temper, throw tantrums, make excuses, blame everyone except for themselves, and generally make the entire experience bad for everyone. I once played padel with a guy who blamed his rather useless performance on the balls “for being too bouncy”. This while everyone was playing with the same balls. Imagine!
The thing about losing is, it is inevitable. It is baked into everything we do. Even the very best in the business don’t win all the time:
- Roger Federer, my favourite tennis player of all time, lost 34% of all finals he played in.
- The best batsmen in the world, like AB de Villiers, Jacques Kallis, Joe Root and Virat Kohli, only score more than 50 runs once every four times they bat. They fail 75% of the time.
- A standard professional golf tournament has a field of around 120 to 150 players. 99.2% of the players who compete don’t win the trophy.
- The All Blacks, possibly the most historically successful team across all sports, on average, lose one out of every four matches they play.
Although winning is fun, losing is normal. Learning how to do it while maintaining hope and poise is central to becoming a resilient human being. You should never play to lose. Neither do you have to enjoy losing. But you have to learn to accept it as part of the game.
You can lose and treat your teammates and opponents with respect. You can lose, feel disappointed, and use it as an opportunity to learn from what went wrong. You can play your absolute best and still lose because your opponent is better than you. There is no shame in that. If you can carry yourself like a champion when things don’t go your way, then losing is not the same as failing.
The Proteas have already started the comeback by beating the Aussies in an ODI on Tuesday. Let’s hope the Boks can do the same in Cape Town tomorrow! Thank you for reading. We hope you have a weekend filled with victories.
If you would like to learn to lose like a champion, get in touch. You can reach us at info@purposeworks.co.za.
At PurposeWorks we are all about Making You and Your Work Rock. Our focus is on Organisational Health and Design, Employee Centered Culture, Leadership Development and Performance Coaching. For more information on how we can help you create a work environment that rocks, develop a great team, become an inspiring leader or unlock your personal excellence talk to us at info@purposeworks.co.za.
