“Sometimes you win sometimes you lose.”
A quote we always hear every time there is a competition. It’s a reality of life that we face everyday and as we deal with reality we often describe the result as winning and losing.
Winning is the best result we often dream to achieve. We do everything for winning. We train hard, we embrace the pain, and we sacrifice a lot to be called a winner. Winning means we reached our goal. We tackled the obstacle and we are prepared to take on a new challenge. It also tells us that the system we used to achieve a certain goal is working well thus, we achieved the victory.
How about losing? Does it means something good for us? Or Does it only reflect our failure to achieve a goal were dying to achieve?
On November 10 of this year, our “kailian” MMA champion Eduard Folayang failed to defend his lightweight belt against the contender. He did not just fail, he failed in a very unforgettable fashion. What does it mean to suffer a loss like that? Does it means it’s over for him now? Can he try again later? Does it tells him that the other guy is so much better that him? Most importantly, is this really a loss or is it an opportunity.
The answer is given by John Maxwell’s books on leadership. In his book, he said that losing is a good thing because when we lose it opens the opportunity for us to learn. It gives us the opportunity to improve ourselves. It give us the fuel to move further and it makes us be more prepared in another encounter.
Losing provides us a great motivation to strive further and learn more and it is safe to say that we can get more motivation to go and do more in losing than in winning.
Our Champion, Eduard Folayang, is an intelligent man and I know he knows all of these. He is a living example of using his loss as an opportunity for learning. He have done it many times before and it is certain that he will do it again.
This shows us that Striving for a goal has nothing negative to it. You will never lose doing it instead you will be a better and more accomplished person. With all these being said, we should change the quote we are commonly using. We should start saying, “Sometimes we win, Sometimes we learn.”