"The man who accepts losing, has already lost." - George R.R Martin
I walked quietly to the cage sitting ominously at the center of the room. A crowd of people surrounded each side cheering wildly. Not for me, but the sheer carnage of my sport. I was entering my debut as a Mixed Martial Artist. I’d trained hard for just under a year in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai kickboxing. I was technically slated to fight a few weeks later than this but I’d agreed to fill in a slot on weeks’ notice to help the promoter. I stepped in the black wire fenced cage and the door locked behind me. My opponent, who was making his own debut, waited eagerly on the other side. The ref signaled us to begin, we touched gloves and BANG!
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I ate a painful head kick but remained standing. What followed was a barrage of brutality that we both dished out onto each other for the next two rounds. When it was over I laid defeated, having gotten careless with my position, I submitted to a guillotine choke within the final ten seconds of the second round. I was bloodied, I was brutalized, and I was morally defeated.
I’d lost, he’d won. His hand was raised and mine was not. No one in the audience could question who the better fighter was that night. No one would struggle to figure out who was the clear and definitive winner. Roger…if you end up reading this; great job bro!
Yes it is true that I lost and that hurts. It hurts physically, mentally, and emotionally. However, just because I lost. It did not make me a loser. Because within loss there is opportunity. An opportunity to learn and to improve. The next morning after the fight I was back in the weight room training for the battle still to come. I was now hungry for retribution, I had footage of my failure which I have watched repeatedly for two purposes. One to identify my shortcomings, and two so that I could fuel my motivation. Since then I have had two more fights which I finished in the first round.
Now I will add that three weeks prior I had competed in a kickboxing match which I decisively ended within the first round. I felt great, on top of the world…I learned absolutely NOTHING! On top of not learning a single thing from that victory I also developed an underserved ego which was quickly checked by the beating that followed three weeks later.
This is the value of losing, and it’s a value we are robbing our children of. The participation trophy system that we as a society have developed is stripping child competitors of desire, humility, and resilience, and they know it. Children are closer to a human’s primal instinct with their underdeveloped brains than we as adults are. They see past the “Everyone’s a winner” B.S. They are competitive, when they do something, they do it to be the best. When you take that from them then what are they left with? A plastic trophy devoid of any actual meaning. It mid as well go into the trash. Eventually the child will forget about being the best because the result is the same regardless, and this will trickle over into the other facets of that child’s life. They will cease to put their best foot forward in anything and even worse will develop a sense of entitlement. Just look at generation Z if you want hard evidence of what I’m talking about.
It’s not the child’s fault, it’s ours. We’ve compensated for our own insecurities and projected that onto our children to “protect” them from the harsh reality that not everyone is made the same and we are entitled to nothing except what we earn for ourselves.
Now you might be thinking to yourself “I don’t want my child to feel like a loser.” I’ve already stated that losing does not make you a loser. You’re only a loser when you fail to pick yourself up from defeat and learn from it. You have to make the choice to be better. That is the true divide between winners and losers. Awarding failure will never instill that mentality. We don’t need to expose our children to the same caliber of brutal defeat that I brought on myself (although I am a firm believer that children should learn some form of martial arts, article to come on that) however we do need to enforce that when our children commit to something, they do so with 100% commitment and effort. You also don’t need to be the try hard dad or overzealous soccer mom who push their children to unreal expectations. As long as they are giving it their best, and they understand humility in defeat. They are winning.
