College football season is here! Unfortunately, many of my favorite teams – including my alma mater (Penn State) – started the season by losing their first game.
Here’s an important excerpt from my upcoming book, WIN: Simple Insights to Help STUDENT-ATHLETES Win the Game of Life, that deals with how to respond after a tough loss!
You Can’t Win ‘em All
Very few teams go undefeated for an entire season. In professional sports, the teams that eventually win the championship almost always suffer a loss at some point throughout the season. So, even the best teams have bad days and lose.
I don’t like losing. I never did. My dad told me that I came home from school one day in the first grade crying and upset because my teacher beat me two games to one in checkers. It may be OK for a first-grader to throw a tantrum because they lost, but that same behavior is not acceptable for someone your age!
This may sound strange, but I have come to appreciate the value of losing. There are critical lessons to be learned when you lose. In fact, I grew as an athlete more from watching my mistakes on film than I did admiring the things I did well.
When you don’t do well on an assignment or test, you now have an opportunity to go back, learn what you need to learn, and try it again.
Make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of blaming others, like your coaches, teammates, and officials, when you lose.When you don’t take responsibility for your actions during a loss, you can’t learn and grow from the experience.
Every loss/failure carries with in the seed of improvement.