I’ve read accounts of several star athletes (Tom Brady and Michael Jordan standout) who hold a sentiment about losing that REALLY resonates with me. It goes something like this:
Losing sucks worse than winning feels good.
I don’t want to admit it. But it’s a self-realization I’ve had about myself.
It’s true in my life. But I’ll keep this related to business/career endeavors and esp. sports and games throughout my life.
The bitterness of losing sucks so bad, I never want to lose. I never want to feel rejection. Failure. Striking out. Being told no.
The pain of losing is a very tough pill for me to swallow. It doesn’t go down easy. At all.
But here’s the deal though …
If I look back on my life …. I’ve won. I’ve felt winning. Many times. I’ve stood atop my own personal mountaintops many times.
If winning was seeing high scores, I’ve won.
I like winning so I don’t have to feel losing.
A couple of big times I’ve seemingly “won” by all accounts and standards, it almost felt numb, surreal. It felt like another Tuesday.
It’s not the feeling of beating someone else necessarily. It’s the avoidance of the pain of losing.
It’s not about the pride of being better than someone else, or besting them.
It’s about avoiding the way I feel about myself when I lose.
I don’t want to ever feel I’m not enough.
That I couldn’t do something. That I couldn’t get to the goal or win. That I wasn’t capable. That I wasn’t …. enough.
I avoid this so much …. that I don’t attempt things if there is a high chance I’ll fail. (And wow, business is not a high success percentage game.)
I give up and lose before I start. I admit and accept failure. So I don’t even try it. Especially if the potential losing percentage is very high.
I don’t want to feel that feeling of being unable, uncapable, un-enough.
I don’t want to feel what it might say about me.
Or I don’t want to feel or hear what I might say about myself if I lose.
I don’t want to sit in the sphere of defeat, or losing, or being rejected, or failing because it points to something deep within me that I have not been able to be OK with.
It’s the stinging public declaration of what I feel every day …. that I’m not perfect.
And deep down, I am terrified of seeing the reality …. that I’m imperfect, flawed, weak, not enough … or really …. that I can’t do all the things, all the time, perfectly.
So not losing then becomes an obsession. Never losing, never failing, never feeling inadquate.
Never feeling those things.
Avoidance becomes the great tactic to not feel that way. To find the wins, the things I believe I can “win” at and do and accomplish.
Early in my life, whether it was baseball or basketball, I would obsessively work at it. Trying to make perfect my imperfections. To be whatever ideal image I had about it in my head.
So I’d practice and practice and practice and beat myself up every time I didn’t make the shot, or throw the ball perfectly and consistently.
I brute forced it.
My shoulder still hurts sometimes because I wore it out throwing baseballs against a trampoline on the side of our house as hard as I could.
Because I couldn’t accept the realization of defeat …. that I was never going to be the ideal I had in my mind about what a good baseball, or basketball player was.
I finally got reprieves from those, by compelling reasons to give up on those obsessions and move on …. for baseball, it was seeing a curveball for the first time (holy shit it came at my face!). For basketball, it was getting pants’d in middle school practice.
So I quit, gave up and eventually found other things that were easier, natural to me.
Why is all this significant to me?
It’s the part of ….. what losing says about me, from me.
And the intense pain of that reality and realization.
I’m seeing more and more in this core mindset/belief about myself …. recognizing it, now writing it out … that the sting and bitterness of losing, of defeat, or rejection is so powerful in my life.
I don’t like to feel that kind of pain.
The realization that I’m not perfect or ideal.
And how much my life has been driven by the “not enough” feeling.
I’ve talked publicly about Superhero Syndrome …. and I’ve had it. My expectation of myself is to be able to win, save the day, do all the things, all the time, perfectly.
It’s likely hampered my growth. I’ll admit that much.
I’ll go a step further too …. and admit it’s rather toxic to my self-image and life.
I don’t want to feel it … and I especially don’t want others to see it, be able to affirm it … because it hurts way too damn bad.
The last couple of years have been approaching those painful feelings. Not just instantly avoiding them, but taking a step closer to them, trying to “sit with them” a little longer.
So right now, my work is … being a little more gentle with myself about it. Admitting it, exploring it, or just sitting with it …. and wrapping an arm around it and saying, “I see you. I feel you. And those feelings are all okay.”
And there lies the real work.
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