How to Lose Like a Winner

Failing is among life’s least pleasant experiences, but nothing else is as essential to success. The opposite of success is not failure, but mediocrity. The truth is that some of history’s most impressive successes started out as big, fat failures. Beethoven, Lincoln, Churchill, Einstein...the list is pretty impressive. The stories of the world’s most successful failures suggest that what matters most is not whether you fail, but how you fail. Basketball legend Michael Jordan noted that, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life - and that is why I succeed.”

Research by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck shows that failure, when viewed as a learning experience - in other words, as an opportunity for self-improvement - can build and strengthen new neural pathways in the brain.

The way people view their own intelligence has a profound effect on how they react to setbacks. Some people, when faced with a problem they can’t solve, become discouraged or defensive. These people have a fixed theory of intelligence - they believe they’re born with a finite talent for learning. They tend to focus more on tasks they can already do well, and have a fear of trying things that might involve making a mistake or appearing stupid.

Other people, when faced with a similar setback, view it as a challenge to overcome, as a signal to try something new, and as an opportunity to learn. These people have an expandable theory of intelligence - they believe they can increase their ability by putting in more effort, even if they fail the first time around.

We can all expand our thinking - and our ability to overcome setbacks - by framing these challenges as an opportunity to learn. When we do this, connections among synapses in our brains become stronger the more the learning is repeated. So failure isn’t only a great teacher, it’s a great brain-expander.

One of Dweck’s significant findings related to education is that when you praise a student for intelligence or talent, he or she sees failure as something undermining it and becomes so afraid of making mistakes that motivation is stunted. But if you put the emphasis on the process or the effort the student is putting in, he or she learns to be resilient in the face of setbacks and is more open to seeking challenges.

In business, willingness to take risks - and possibly fail - is essential for success. Interestingly, businesses that succeed the most and businesses that fail the most tend to have identical strategies: They take big risks. The opposite of success is not failure, but mediocrity. To achieve big successes, you need to take big risks; if you take little or no risks, mediocrity is guaranteed. You can’t be a game-changer in the business world unless you try something risky, which might well result in failure.

Every leader should know how to lose. Failure is part of life. Coping with it is critical to personal development. Here are some suggestions:

1. Avoid personalizing defeat. When you experience a setback, if you accept defeat and internalize is as a personal failing, you will be defeated. You must accept that, for example, the project did not meet expectations or that your leadership was lacking, but you the person are not a “loser.”

2. Analyze what went wrong. Look at the objective facts. Self-analysis that leads to self-awareness is required. Self-analysis that leads to self-pity is to be loathed. Take an active role in your self-discovery process. Write down what you would do differently the next time.

3. Renew yourself. Okay, so things didn’t work out as expected. The next step reveals your character. Richard Nixon stated that, “A man is not finished when he’s defeated; he’s finished when he quits.” Admitting defeat and acknowledging circumstances and responsibility lays the foundation for moving forward.

4. Learn everything you can from your failures. A desire to avoid the risk of failure may indicate that you lack the inner fortitude to face adversity head on. Remember that everybody fails. It’s part of the process that leads to maturity and success. Most successful people have been through a number of failures in life, but they usually don’t think of their failures as defeats. They think of them as lessons.