Losing is disappointing, tiring, and sometimes embarrassing. Nobody likes it, nobody strives for it, it’s not a goal someone wakes up one day and sets for themselves. There’s a reason why first place winners take medals or awards.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve lost at, it could be a soccer game, chess match, or even a simple bet with a friend. Sports losses are difficult. Sometimes you have an entire team depending on you but sometimes you’re on your own and have nobody but yourself to depend on. Either way, it takes a toll.

qup mentally and put yourself down. After losing, you might find yourself getting into your own head and putting yourself down. It’s easy to tell yourself that you “could have and should have done better”, or “you suck”, “you should quit”, “you’re not good enough”. These emotions can easily become overwhelming and hard to snap out of. If these thought patterns aren’t broken, it’s easy to fall into a spiral and could negatively impact you long-term.

How do we fix this? How do we stop feeling bad after losing?

Short answer, you don’t.

Unfortunately, losing is part of life and it’s going to happen regardless of how much you train, study, or learn. It’s not realistic to always win. But we can always strive for it and when we don’t win, we can build ourselves up and work on what we’re lacking or struggling with.

The biggest way to help yourself through a loss is understanding and maybe changing your expectations. It’s okay if you’re ranked third and you place the first ranked team and loss, there’s a reason they’re ranked ahead of you. Or it’s okay if it’s race day, you have a migraine, and only get second place; you weren’t at your best. Understanding that expectations can and will change on a daily basis, is vital to accepting a loss.

We also have to understand that as long as we put in our best effort, sometimes losing is out of our control. After every soccer game, regardless of win, lose, or tie, my dad would say to me “can you look at yourself, really look at yourself, and say you did the best you could?”. I took this way to literally and would find myself sitting in-front of a mirror asking myself if I did the best I could. This drastically changed the way I viewed the outcomes of my games, but more specifically my losses. Because sometimes, we put in 110% and we still lose. It’s inevitable.

At the end of it all, losing happens. It can make you or it can break you. It’s your choice.