Winning Sucks. Losing Rules.
Yes, you read that right.
Intro
The time is 9:55 P.M. and will most likely be about 11:00 P.M. by the time I finish the first paragraph of this article… you may be thinking if it takes me an hour to write one paragraph then I have a long night ahead of myself but that’s not the case as once the first paragraph is complete the rest is already there I just have to type it out. This applies to our lives on a daily, the hardest part of anything is arguably getting it started in the first place. But the cool thing is once it is started then you just have to maintain the success and keep it going… NO! WAIT! That is not right! DO NOT keep that success going! You are probably wondering why I am contradicting myself and before you ask, no I am not a psychopath I am just someone who does not believe that success should happen to one time after time for many reasons. So I guess this is where I should start explaining these reasons right? Nope. This is where I am going to tell you a story, in fact, a personal story of my life and something that I sadly did not realize until a few days ago after taking a step back and looking at the situation from a whole.
Part 1
So let me get you caught up to speed here. I am cyclist. Yes, that is a sport and it is a hard one. For those of you that think riding a bike cannot be hard well try riding it a hundred miles a day. I became a cyclist in the summer of 7th going into 8th grade and have been ever since. I love the sport but like all sports there is the drama/gossip between teammates and of course the parents. Like most by the time you become a teenager you most likely have played/tried multiple sports and maybe if you’re lucky you succeed at a couple of them, for me I failed at all and any sport that involved a ball in it. You name it, golf? Yup. Tennis? Oh yes. Basketball? Totally. And so much more. So that’s basically how I got into cycling but the thing is I was actually decent at cycling, in fact, I was fantastic at it. I was a beast when it came to track cycling and on road I was great and well the crits — road races in a circle like course — are another story for another day. So when I first started out like most I sucked. I came in last often and was not seen as a threat to other cyclist in races. This all changed though about 5 months into the sport. When I came back after the offseason I was winning races left and right. This is where the story takes its turn for the worst. Most assume winning is good which is only partly true as it only is if it happens on the near occasion. If it happens every-time well that’s when it becomes bad.
Part 2
When we win our brains release dopamine which as I’m sure you and the rest of the world know that makes us feel good and want to repeat that action. The issue here is that when we win not only in a sport but with anything in life over and over again doing the same action we don’t get that high anymore at least not on the basic level. This is the same concept as drugs because the more we use them the more we need to get the high again. When we succeed time after time we forget way too easily that we still can fail and most likely will at some point. This is bad because if you have not had that failure in a while or at all then when you do you crash it is taken usually very hard. I have never seen this worse than within myself when I came in last in a race after having had many wins before that. Most think crashing after a high is dealt with anger and rage but that is not always the case. In my situation, it was a lot worse… I blamed someone, something and everything else BUT myself. For those of you that may not think that is bad then let me tell you this… it is one of the WORST things, you could ever do with anything that you failed in. This is because it does not allow you to improve AT ALL but in fact makes you worse thus making you fail even more and setting you an endless downward spiral…
Failure: Noun
1. Lack of success
2. The omission of expected or required action
Realism
Some may say that this doesn’t happen to everyone and eventually you will learn to stop blaming others and to only blame yourself which may be true but usually by that point you have already made it to a lower level than you ever wanted to be. My coach taught me this over many years and to this day I remember to not blame others and to only blame myself and to ask “What did I do wrong and how can it be prevented next time?” Most think it is something you can overcome and learn over time and however true that may be there is always something in you that wants to blame others for the mistakes you made but surprisingly this is all preventable. All you have to do is lose before you get to the top. Now the takeaway from this is not to lose on purpose but to realize that losing is better than winning because when we win we don’t normally take anything away from it expect the honor and fame that comes with the win. On the other hand when we lose, especially in the beginning we can take it as an accomplishment in and of itself and think “why did I lose and how can I prevented it next time?” instead of a “I’m the best attitude” from winning all the time just to find out after 1 loss you are now blaming everyone but yourself.
The Big Takeaway
Every day, hour, minute and second our brains are processing billions of calculations some bigger and more important than others… but in the end, they are all needed to function properly and it’s the same with success and failure A.K.A. winning and losing. We need the balance of both of them and in the end losing teaches us something, winning only gets us one thing which is fame. So what do you want, fame and glory or lessons that can be applied all throughout life? The choice is yours and always will be and although success is good just like everything in life its only good in moderation.
If you enjoyed this article please give it few claps and share it with others. Thank you and remember to have a great day/night and to always stay awesome!
If you have any questions, comments or anything else about this article or another one of mine you can always DM me on my Twitter which is linked in my bio or you can email me at mmech2001@gmail.com.
