I bet the answer to this question will be a unanimous “yes”. I am in that category as well! No one ever wants to lose, it is definitely not the best feeling in the world. However, something strange happens when you lose, as opposed to when you win. When we lose, we usually ask ourselves two very important questions, “What did I do wrong?” and “What could I do differently next time?” These are very powerful questions, they help us to grow and reflect upon our actions. It provides us with a reality check, which in turn stops us from taking things for granted when we win. This is the only part I like about losing!

As I have mentioned in previous posts, one of the best pieces of advice that I have received from one of my mentors was that, “There is no such thing as failure only feedback”. Entrepreneurs tend to put themselves in situations where there is a higher degree of risk as compared to taking the traditional route. Walking the path less traveled will undoubtedly have unexpected twists and turns, this does often lead to us falling a few times. Ultimately, experience helps us navigate these twists more effectively and that is when we start winning. However, if we do not lose or fall down often enough, we tend to take our good fortune for granted, and when we do eventually fall, we blame circumstances rather than trying to learn from our mistakes.

The key to take away here is, that even though we may hate losing, we have to acknowledge that it is part and parcel of life and the process of evolving. What we need to do when it happens is to evaluate the reasons that caused it. After which we need to change our strategies and put up safe guards to prevent it from re-occurring. Doing this helps us continue to develop further and should lead to losing less often. Sore losers who blame circumstances and other people do not get far in life. Living a life of denial only sets us up for even more losses, and worse, there is no learning along the way.

Make sure you hate losing for the right reasons.