How to Lose Gracefully -- and Why Losing Well is Essential to Your Success
by www.Sedona.com
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
--Samuel Beckett
Nobody likes to lose, yet in every even remotely competitive situation, someone will.
Perhaps it’s the next promotion at work, or the woman that both you and your best friend have your eye on. Even small things, like who gets the last piece of pizza, have an air of winning and losing to them.
Assuming you are the “loser,” all of these situations present a choice. You can either be a sore loser or you can lose gracefully. Sore losers get angry. They blame their loss on the opponent, not taking responsibility for their own actions. Sore losers hold on to resentment, and may internalize their failure, leading to low self-esteem or even depression.
Graceful losers are quite the opposite. They congratulate their opponent, embrace their failure and get to work on figuring out where they went wrong. Graceful losers do not take failure personally, but they do accept responsibility. They learn from the loss, then apply what they’ve learned so that next time, they may win.
The Difference Between Sore Losers and Gracious Losers
Everyone has failed at some point in their life. This is nothing exceptional. However, it’s what you do with that failure that makes all the difference. Losing gracefully is the first step to moving forward, past the loss. In fact, graceful losers are hardly impacted by the loss at all, because they know another opportunity awaits them.
Perhaps the biggest risk of being a sore loser is this loss of hope for the future. A sore loser is stuck on the loss, and in so being, may miss out on a new opportunity, or be passed by for one because of their poor attitude.
Of course, making lemonade out of life’s lemons is not always easy. In fact, it can be downright hard. But it is a principle worth living your life by, and teaching to your children to live theirs by as well.
How can you lose gracefully, even when you really, really wanted to win? By using The Sedona Method to realize something great: you never really lose.
In fact, once you learn how to release the feelings you have about losing -- the anger, the embarrassment, the resentment -- you will always feel successful. And then a funny thing will happen. When you FEEL successful, you will ACT successful, and then, sure enough, you will BE successful.
“As you let go of the feelings that cause the sensation of loss you discover that you never really lose anything,” says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training of Sedona Training Associates.
“The objects in your life are always changing, but what you are at your core is changeless,” Dwoskin continues.
The more you release on the fears and negativity you have about winning and losing, the easier it will be to accept things that do happen. When you lose, you’ll then be able to do so gracefully, and when you win, you’ll be a gracious winner.
“By releasing you identify more with the changeless and allow the comings and goings of your life to simply happen as they do,” Dwoskin says. “This gives great relief and also allows you to be present with and for the new opportunities that are here every moment.”
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