article from MAY-JUNE 2008
Learn From Losing
As the saying goes, “Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.” But are you aware that you can often learn a lot more from losing?
BY JEFFREY D. DAVIS
In all competitions, people lose. In fact, in most competitions, nearly everyone loses! Have you considered that in a marathon of 128 people, 127 of the contestants do not win? We have a tendency to focus on the winner, but many more lives are affected by losing.
There is another fact that most people do not realize. Even those who win have most likely lost many times before. Have you ever considered this? Unless the competition is entirely comprised of novices who never competed before, the person who wins is often one who has more experience in the activity. To gain that experience, he or she likely had to lose against more experienced people.
There may be some rare exceptions to this, but the principle is generally true. Everyone loses—so it should not be a surprise when you do. Yet, those who eventually win take time to learn from losing, rather than just regretting it or giving up.
Difficulty Improves You
You should always strive to win, do your best and, most importantly, do what is right.
However, winning something not challenging is not much of an achievement. For example, if you are 16 years old and can beat your five-year-old brother at Scrabble, did you really achieve anything? Sure, you will always win in such circumstances, but what does it prove?
Your goal should be to improve in areas where you have weaknesses, understanding that you can always get better. This means you should seek challenges—reach forward to things that are difficult—find challenges that will force you to grow. This cannot be done if you are always playing games in which you easily beat your opponent.
If you want to improve at something, you should spend time around an individual who is already skilled at it. If you compete with him, you will probably lose. However, when you lose to someone better than you, you will learn much more than you could by simply winning against an individual who is worse.
By competing against better players, you can observe the correct way to do things. Also, a better player will likely take advantage of your mistakes, thereby making it obvious when you make an error. You might lose, but you will become better in time.
What Was Wrong?
Whenever you lose, it is important to analyze why. If you are following the principle just discussed—that you should be striving to achieve something difficult—it will be easy to believe that the goal was unobtainable. Occasionally, this will be the case, and you should reconsider your goal, ensuring it is challenging, but reasonable. Most often you will find that what you are seeking is quite possible, but you probably need to fix a few things first.
To find imperfections, you will want to review the entire event. Whether a short game of ping-pong or a full day of football, examine the entire process and remember all that occurred. As you recall everything, create a list of which areas you need to improve. Suppose you lost a ping-pong match: Was your serve too slow? Was your reaction time too slow? Did you lack control? Were you too predictable? Was it a combination of these?
Here is where the greatest opportunity from losing comes into play. All of a sudden, you have a lot of information about areas to improve. Winning does not highlight your weaknesses—but losing certainly does!
Once you have compiled a list of areas upon which you can improve, the next step is to prioritize those areas. What gave you the most difficulty? Or on the other side of the coin, in what area could you benefit by improving? For example, if you lost ten points in ping-pong due to a bad serve and only three because of a lack of control, you would want to concentrate more on your serve. This seems obvious, but taking the time to properly analyze different deficits can be helpful in fixing them.
Create a Plan
After examining your strengths and weaknesses, it is time to devise a plan. Using ping-pong as an example, maybe you want to develop a really fast serve before your next game, or maybe you want to master ball control. By analyzing your mistakes and creating a plan to correct them, you can figure out exactly how to win.
To overcome your areas of weakness, you will need to engage in an activity that can be difficult: practice. Be sure to devote adequate time to diligently practicing your areas of weakness. You have probably heard the saying “practice makes perfect.” Those who master a particular activity or sport have done so only after a great deal of practice. No one is born a winner from the womb.
You will find that you will improve overall in a particular activity if you focus on improving in areas in which you are the weakest. This can be difficult to do, as it is certainly much more fun to practice areas in which you are already proficient. (Of course, spending some time working on areas you enjoy is also beneficial, as it will prevent a practice session from seeming like drudgery.)
In addition to practicing, you will want to employ another basic learning tactic: research. Depending on how serious you are about an activity, you may want to find books, articles or little snippets of “how to’s” on the Internet. Finding the best methods to pursue in any activity can save you many hours of practicing incorrectly.
Perhaps the best way to research a particular skill is to ask someone who is better than you. This means, quite often, the best person to converse with when you lose is the person (or people) who won. Since they have just seen you in action, they can probably inform you on what areas you can improve.
Put It All Together
Follow this plan to learn from losing. Pursue challenges that will force you to grow. Analyze your performance and find areas of weakness. Practice the activity, making sure to focus on those weak areas. Research and discuss with others how to improve, including the person who beat you.
All of these steps are difficult. But this is the path to becoming a winner. If you don’t work hard at it, you will lose again and again—eventually you will grow tired of losing and give up.
However, if you strive to become better, you will! Eventually, with enough effort, you will be the winner who stands out from the crowd. Then, maybe, someone will come to you and ask, “How do I learn from losing?”