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When You’re Losing, Everything Hurts
Losses cause us to be emotionally stuck, mentally defeated, and create a gap between “I should” and “I did.” What ultimately distinguishes a successful person from an unsuccessful one who is otherwise like him is the capacity to manage disappointment and loss. When we win, we gain confidence.
Losses never leave us the same. The number or severity of your losses isn’t as important as how you experience those losses. We must not allow them to control us. In fact, a loss isn’t totally a loss it you learn something as a result of it.
Humility: The Spirit of Learning
Humility opens the door to learning and to ever higher levels of achievement. Humility allows us to:
- Possess a true perspective of ourselves and life.
- Learn and grow in the face of losses. How does a humble person learn from mistakes? By pausing and reflecting. Experience isn’t the best teacher; evaluated experience is. The Book of Ecclesiastes states, “In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity, consider.”
- Let go of perfection and keep trying.
- Make the most out of our mistakes. When we’re humble, we are open to seeing our mistakes as possibilities for innovation and success.
Novelist J. M. Barrie observed, “The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed make it.”
Reality: The Foundation of Learning
If we want to succeed in life and to learn from our losses, we must able to face reality and use it to create a foundation for growth. There are three Realities of Life:
- Life is Difficult: In Life’s Greatest Lessons, Hal Urban writes, “Once we accept the fact that life is hard, we begin to grow… Technology has provided us with push-button living… We’re told over and over there’s a quick and easy way to do just about everything… Ads are all around us because the people in advertising and marketing have a good understanding of human behavior. They know that most people don’t accept life as hard and continue to look for the quick and easy way instead.”
- Life is Difficult for Everyone
- Life is More Difficult for Some Than for Others: The playing field is not level.
Here are the top 5 ways people make life harder for themselves:
- They stop growing and learning. Very few of the Nobel Prize winners ever did anything significant after they been recognized for their achievements. T.S. Eliot stated it even more strongly: “The Nobel is a ticket to one’s own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.” Success can have a way of distorting our view of reality. It can make us think we are better than we really are. Winning causes people to relax and enjoy the spoils of victory. Do that and you just may coast your way to failure.
- They don’t think effectively.
- They don’t face reality. Author and speaker Denis Waitley says, “Most people spend their entire lives on a fantasy island called ‘Someday I’l1.'” In other words, they think, Someday I’ll do this. Someday I’ll do that. Someday I’ll be rich.” Many of the things you desire to do in life are attainable—if you are willing to face reality, know your starting place, count the cost of your goal, and put in the work.
- They are slow to make proper adjustments. The great heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield said, “Everyone has a plan until they are hit.” The stress of a difficult situation can make you forget your plan and if you don’t handle the situation well, you won’t be able to make adjustments.
- They don’t respond correctly to challenges. Author and business expert Jim Collins says, “There is a sense of exhilaration that comes from facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.” That’s a fantastic way of stating the correct response to challenges.
Responsibility: The First Step of Learning
Responsibility is the most important ability that a person can possess. Nothing happens to advance our potential until we step up and say, “I’m responsible.”
Here’s the pattern of responsibility avoidance:
- We develop a victim mentality. Twenty years ago, Charles J. Sykes wrote a book entitled A Nation of Victims in which he decried the victim mentality that had arisen among people in the United States. Rather than taking responsibility for their lives, many people are trying to take the easy way out by establishing themselves as victims of society, the economy, a conspiracy, or some alleged discrimination. A victim mind-set causes people to focus on what they cannot instead of what they can do.
- We have an unrealistic perspective of how life works. Life isn’t fair. Johnny Carson said, “If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.” Instead of focusing on why things happen, we are better off learning how things work.
- We Constantly Engage in “Blamestorming”: That’s the creative process used for finding an appropriate scapegoat.
- We Give Away the Choice to Control Our Lives: Psychologists say that some people possess an internal locus of control, where they rely primarily on themselves for the gains and losses in their lives. Others possess an external locus of control, where they blame others when something goes wrong.
- We Eliminate Any Possibility of Growth for Success: Real success is a journey. We have to approach it with a long-term mind-set. We have to hang in there, stay focused, and keep moving forward. Excuses are like exits along the road of success that lead us nowhere.
What happens when we learn to be responsible?
As long as I take responsibility for the things I can control in my life and try my best to learn from them, I can feel contented. The best learners are people who don’t see their losses and failures as permanent. They see them as temporary.
Those who take responsibility for themselves learn from their failures and do not repeat them. Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Improvement: The Focus of Learning
The desire to improve themselves is in the DNA of all successful people.
Improving yourself is the first step to improving everything else. Success does not always bring growth, but personal growth will always add to our success. The important question is not, “What am I getting?” but “What am I becoming?” Authors Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus asserted, “It is the capacity to develop and improve themselves that distinguishes leaders from followers.”
Improvement is not satisfied with “quick fixes”. We live in a society with destination disease. Too many people want to do enough to “arrive,” and then they want to retire. My friend Kevin Myers says it this way: “Everyone is looking for a quick fix, but what they really need is fitness. People who look for fixes stop doing what’s right when pressure is relieved. People who pursue fitness do what they should matter what.” Make this your motto:
- I’m not where I’m supposed to be;
- I’m not what I want to be;
- But I’m not what I used to be;
- I haven’t learned how to arrive;
- I’ve just learned how to keep on going.
Hope: The Motivation of Learning
John W. Gardner said, “The first and last task of a leader is to keep hope alive—the hope that we can finally find our way through to a better world—despite the day’s action, despite our own inertness, shallowness, and wavering resolve.”
Hope is inspiring. It gives us the motivation for living and learning. Hope says yes to life. Hope fills us with energy. It creates excitement in us for the future.
Hope is a difference maker. When Winston Churchill was asked what was England’s greatest weapon versus the Nazis, he responded with one word: hope.
Teachability: The Pathway of Learning
People often ask Maxwell what most determines if they will reach their potential. His answer: a teachable spirit. Teachability is possessing the intentional attitude and behavior to keep learning and growing throughout life. What got you to where you are won’t keep you here. And it certainly won’t take you where you want to go.
Here are the Traits of a Teachable Person:
- An attitude conducive to learning. People with a teachable spirit approach each day as an opportunity for another learning experience. Their hearts are open. Their minds are alert for something new. Their attitudes are expectant. Being teachable depends on two things: capacity and attitude. Our capacity may to some degree be set. But our attitude is totally our choice. 85% of success in life is due to attitude, while only 15% ability.
- A beginner’s mind-set. Successful people are continually learning new things. What’s the best way to do that? Have a beginner’s mind-set. What do all beginners have in common? They know they don’t know it all, and that shapes the way they approach things. In general, they’re open and humble, lacking in the rigidity that often accompanies achievement.
- Take long, hard looks in the mirror. Novelist James Thom remarked, “Probably the most honest, ‘self-made’ man ever was the one we heard say: ‘I got to the top the hard way–fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way.'” There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, but some people respond with encores. A teachable spirit will help to put a stop to that.
- Encourage others to speak into their lives. Teachable people need to surround themselves with people who know them well and who will lovingly, yet honestly, speak into their life.
- Learn something new every day. Children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman said, “We must not, in trying to think about how can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.” Teachable people try to leverage this truth by learning something new every day.
Adversity: The Catalyst for Learning
Writer and professor Robertson Davies said, “Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and then become more extraordinary because of it.”
One of the times people change is when they hurt enough they have to. Adversity causes pain and is a prompt for change. Adversity is a catalyst for learning. Adversity is a better teacher than success if we want to learn from adversity. Philosopher and author Emmet Fox said, “It is the Law that many difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.”
Adversity brings profit as well as pain if we expect it and plan for it. Successful people expect to experience pain when they face adversity. They plan for it. And by planning for it, they set themselves up to profit from it. Founding Fathers knew that they would face adversity as they rebelled against England. They knew they would suffer pain. But because they were prepared for it, they also were able to reap benefits from it.
Performance psychologist Jim Loehr says, “If you see a failure as an opportunity to learn and get better, it will be. If you perceive it as a mortal blow, it will be. In that way, the power of story is more important than the experience itself.”
Problems: Opportunities for Learning
Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck said, “Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them?”
Don’t…
- Underestimate the problem. Never underestimate a problem or your power to cope with it. Your reaction to a problem, as much as the problem itself, will determine the outcome. The size of the person is more important than the size of the problem.
- Overestimate the problem.
- Wait for the problem to solve itself. Patience is a virtue in problem-solving if you are at the same time doing all that you can to fix the situation. It is not a virtue if you are waiting, hoping that the problem will resolve itself or just go away. Nina DiSesa, who led the ad agency McCann Erickson in the late 1990s, observed, “When you step into a turnaround situation, you can safely assume four things: morale is low, fear is high, the good people are halfway out the door, and the slackers are hiding.”
- Aggravate the problem. We can actually make them worse by how we respond to them.
Instead, Do This…
- Anticipate the problem. They say the punch that knocks you out is not necessarily the hardest one, but the one you didn’t see coming.
- Communicate the problem. Former college football head coach Lou Holtz quipped, “Don’t tell your problems to people! Eighty percent don’t care and the other 20 percent are glad you have them.” Lack of communication and poor communication not only prevent us from solving problems, they can also create problems of their own.
- Evaluate the problem. As you evaluate problems, try to maintain perspective, and always keep the end in mind.
- Appreciate the problem. If we have the right attitude and appreciate a problem, not only will we work harder to solve it, but we will also learn and grow from it.
Consider how an eagle meets turbulent winds. The winds:
- Cause the eagle to fly higher;
- Give the eagle a larger view;
- Lift the eagle above harassment;
- Allow the eagle to use less effort;
- Allow the eagle to stay up longer; and
- Help the eagle to fly faster.
Bad Experiences: The Perspective for Learning
Put your losses into perspective. The next time you have a bad experience, allow it to help you to:
- Accept your humanness. No matter how hard we try, no matter how talented we are, no matter how high our standards may be, we will fail.
- Learn to laugh at yourself and life. Sometimes it’s hard to see the humor during a difficult experience. Maxwell often tells himself, “This is not funny today, but tomorrow it may be.”
- Keep the right perspective. Author and speaker Denis Waitley says, “Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.” One of the worst things you can do to lose perspective is to start feeling sorry for yourself. Psychiatrist Frederic Flach in his book Resilience points out that survivors of bad experiences don’t let the negatives in their lives define them. Instead, they think, “What happened to me may have been bad, but other people are worse off. I’m not giving in.”
- Don’t give up. Ninety percent of those who fail are not actually defeated; they simply quit.
- Don’t let your bad experience become worse experiences.
- Let the bad experience lead you to a good experience. Everyone can relate to having bad experiences in life. But not everyone works to turn the bad experiences into good ones. That is possible only when we turn our losses into learning experiences.
Change: The Price of Learning
We resist change when it feels like a personal loss. Though change feels personal, it often isn’t. The world keeps changing and it affects everyone, whether they like it or not.
Change feels awkward. Because it’s unfamiliar, it often doesn’t feel right. Change goes against tradition. The person who insists on using yesterday’s methods in today’s world won’t be in business tomorrow.
Most people would rather change their circumstances to improve their lives when instead they need to change themselves to improve their circumstances. Positive change and a willingness to learn are personal responsibilities.
Most people do the same thing the same way, yet expect different results. Entrepreneur Alan Cohen said, “To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.”
Most people won’t pay the immediate price to change and end up paying the ultimate price for not changing. When he was faced with a decision that required discipline, Maxwell’s dad often told him, “John, pay now so you can play later.”
If you want to maximize your ability to pay the price of learning and set yourself up to change, improve, and grow, then you need to do the five following things:
- Change yourself. The breakthrough comes when we realize that by making even small changes in ourselves, we can effect big, positive changes.
- Change your attitude. Poet and scholar Samuel Johnson said, “He who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.” Author and speaker Wayne Dyer says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at actually begin to change.”
- Change your nongrowing friends. There’s an old saying: “A mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.” Your friends will either stretch your vision or choke your dreams.
- Determine to live differently than average people. To know who you are becoming requires you not only to know where you are now but also to know where you’re going and how you need to change to get there. If you want something you’ve never had, you must to do something you’ve never done.
- Unlearn what you know to learn what you don’t know. Unlearning is a prerequisite for growth. Unlearning outdated or wrong ways of doing things can be difficult. We tend to lean on what we know, even if it’s not the best for us.
As Master Yoda says, “You must unlearn what you have learned.”
Maturity: The Value of Learning
Author William Saroyan observed, “Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.”
Fred Smith, Maxwell’s mentor for many years, used to tell him, “I don’t think God is as interested in our success as He is in our maturity.”
The Source of Maturity…
- Maturity is the result of finding the benefit in the loss. You have to learn from your mistakes and losses. Banker and speaker Herbert V. Prochnow asserted, “The fellow who never makes mistakes takes his orders from one who does.” Why? Because the one who advances in his or her career takes risks, fails, learns, and applies the lesson to gain the benefit.
- Maturity is the result of learning to feed the right emotions. Dom Capers, NFL Coach, “Maturity is doing what you are supposed to be doing, when you’re supposed to be doing it, no matter how you feel.”
- Maturity is the result of learning to develop good habits. Good habits require discipline and time to develop. Nobel Peace Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen said, “Have you not succeeded? Continue! Have you succeeded? Continue!”
- Maturity is the result of learning to sacrifice today to succeed tomorrow. Author Arthur C. Brooks recently wrote an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal that addressed this subject. In it, Brooks states, “People who cannot defer current gratification tend to fail, and sacrifice itself is part of entrepreneurial success.”
- Maturity is the result of learning to earn respect for yourself and others.
Winning Isn’t Everything, But Learning Is
Here are some final thoughts Maxwell offers on learning:
- Learning too often decreases as winning increases. How do we continue to grow and improve and become more, when what we already have is pretty good? Complacency is the danger any successful person faces. The biggest detriment to tomorrow’s success is today’s success. Consultant Gail Cooper advises, “When you win an award, set it up in the lobby and go back to work.” Some people become so focused on a specific goal that when they hit it they give up, because they’ve made it. Steinbeck wrote, “A strange species are. We can stand anything God nature throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees: miserable, greedy, and sick.”
- Learning is possible only when our thinking changes. Don’t let what you know make you think you know it all. If you can maintain a beginner’s mind set to the end, your thinking will keep changing and you will keep growing. Writer and thinker G. K. Chesterton said, “How we think when we lose determines how long it will be until we win.” Maintaining a consistently positive mental attitude will be your greatest ally in growing and learning.
- Real learning is defined as a change in behavior. Ken Blanchard said, “You haven’t learned anything until you take action and use it.” John Wooden used to continually say to players, “Don’t tell me what you’re going to do, show me what you will do.” The greatest gap in life is the one between knowing and doing.
- Continual success is a result of continually failing and learning. General George S. Patton said, “Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.” With each successive bounce back, you’ll be able to go higher and farther. That’s what success in life is: the ability to keep bouncing back. Author and entrepreneur Joseph Sugarman says, “If you’re willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you’re willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you’ve got the potential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces.”
- If you’re in your strength zone, a problem is a challenge, a learning experience, and a road to improvement. That’s why you need to get out of your comfort zone by taking risks while working in your strength zone. When you take risks, you learn things faster than the people who don’t take risks. Political theorist Benjamin Barber said, “The question to ask is not whether you are a success or a failure, but whether you are a learner or a nonlearner.”
The greatest education you ever receive will come from taking risks your area of strength. As you get older, you will find that you become more disappointed by the things you didn’t attempt than by the ones you attempted and failed to achieve.
So, in summary, we can make our plans and prepare for the future. Sometimes, things work out as planned, and we win. Sometimes, they don’t. That’s when we have opportunities for our greatest learning and growth.
May you learn more each day, as you shoot for the stars!