Bruce Lee once said that "defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality." Why do we take losses so harshly? It could be the way we feel after a loss. After all, it never feels good to lose; it typically feels good to win. Generally, people don't see any benefits associated with losing. You don't receive prize money or a trophy for losing. However, there is a much greater benefit to losing that can't be bought with money, or hung on your mantle. The perk of losing is the opportunity for improvement.
If your opponent gets a checkmate on you during the big chess match, you instantly become aware that you slipped up. This gives you the chance to go home and adjust your strategy. If you win the match, however, you may not see the ways in which your opponent could've outmaneuvered you. After eight years of not competing in Taekwondo tournaments, I got my butt handed to me back in December, losing to a much taller, more skilled opponent 3-19. After watching footage of that match, fine-tuning my technique, and hitting the gym a bit more often, I noticed a pretty drastic improvement. This past weekend, while I still lost my match, I came much closer, with the final score being 13-20. With the next major tournament coming up at the end of May, I have more time to step-up my game and train even harder than I did before.
Additionally, a plus about consecutive losses or slumps is, when you finally do win, the victory is much sweeter. As a baseball fan, I've come to notice that players who haven't gotten a hit in a month treat their slump-ending hit like a home run. Conversely, people who constantly win, or go undefeated for a lengthy period of time, have more trouble coming back from a loss. Ronda Rousey is a prime example. As I stated in my article "Will Rousey Get Rocked?" prior to her devastating first-round loss against Amanda Nunes, Rousey experienced the "Ozymandias effect." You could say that she was the "queen of queens" in the UFC Women's Bantamweight division. After losing to Holly Holm, her first loss in the sport of MMA--after remaining undefeated for several years--her downfall was much less graceful than other fighters who know how to take a loss.
Big Sean perfectly sums up this philosophy with his hit "Bounce Back." When annotating the song for genius.com, he states that the hook, "Last night took a L, but tonight I bounce back," means that, "Part of winning is taking a loss, taking an L. You measure a character of a person of how they bounce back, how they handle themselves after that. That's the true measurement of a champion." The story goes that it took Edison 1,000 times to refine the light bulb. Don't give up hope, no matter how many "L's" you take. Chances are, that "W" is going to mean a whole lot more.
