Winning by Losing

There were any number of what-the-heck, OMG moments at the Rio Olympics, but what’s stuck with me longest is this:

Kerri Walsh Jennings’ reaction after she and her partner April Ross lost in the beach volleyball semi-finals to Brazil.

Walsh Jennings hadn’t dropped so much as a set in the last three Olympics. She’d been winning gold medals since 2008. And most fans — myself definitely included — assumed she was on her way to winning another.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The Brazilian team — which went on to win the silver medal — somehow slipped past the Americans. And here’s how Walsh Jennings responded:

“I spent the day feeling really devastated. And then at some point, I was just like, this is absurd. What an honor, what a privilege — and what an opportunity it is to grow as a person tonight. You have this opportunity to go and fight and redeem yourself.”

And that’s exactly what she and her partner did. They shook themselves off, regained their focus, and took home the bronze.

If you work in the advertising business, like I do, you confront loss all the time. We’re constantly presenting new ideas to our clients, putting our heart and soul on the line, and hoping they’ll nod, smile and cry out “I love it.”

But the sad fact is, that doesn’t happen very often. I’d consider myself lucky — really lucky — if 10% of the ideas I generate make it through the approval process and into production.

Can this be devastating? Absolutely. But tomorrow, or the next day, when the inevitable happens and my client reacts to my work by scrunching up her face and saying , “Ehh, I don’t think so,” I’ll take a deep breath, remember that it’s a privilege to do this kind of work for a living, and do my best to view the setback as an opportunity to grow.

After all, if it works for a three-time gold and one-time bronze medal winner, it certainly ought to work for me.

Quotation source: usatoday.com