When you put yourself out there, there is always a chance you might lose.
If you are going to lose, lose taking risks.
Lose being yourself.
Lose giving your all.
Lose with nothing left in reserve.
Lose with grace, dignity, and pride in your efforts.
Losses like this are not losses, but lessons for future wins.
What kind of loser are you?
Everyone enjoys winning.
It feels good to win, especially at something you have worked hard for.
Losing, on the other hand, rarely feels that great.
But losing will teach you more about yourself than winning ever could.
When you lose, do you make excuses? Do you blame others? Do you tell yourself it does not matter? Do you tell yourself it matters more than it actually does? Do you get angry with the winner, with yourself, or with someone else?
Or do you reflect objectively on your preparation, your mistakes, your performance, and your opportunities for improvement, so that you can make the necessary adjustments to do better next time?
How you lose says way more about you than how you win.
What kind of loser are you?
Win or lose, at the end of the day, you have to live with yourself.
It is better to lose as the best version of yourself than to win being someone you would rather not be.
In any endeavor, if you do your best, with integrity, honor, and courage, and do not leave an ounce of effort in reserve, you can and should hold your head high regardless of the outcome.
This is not an excuse to celebrate failure or to accept loss lightly.
Your goal is and should be to win, in whatever way you define success, but win as yourself.
You are who you have to live with for the rest of your life.
Impress yourself with your effort, give everything you have, and make yourself proud.
No one else and nothing else matters.
By focusing on activities wherein, even if we fail, we still benefit in some way, we cannot lose.
This means involving ourselves in tasks, projects, and relationships that benefit us simply by our having participated in them.
In other words, if the experience itself is rewarding in some way that is of greater value than the resources we expend, there is simply no downside for us.
This is not selfish. It is purely practical. We should look for ways to win even if we fail.
Be unphased while defending and unrelenting while attacking.
If we are open and receptive to them, many of the skills and lessons learned from Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) transfer over into our lives off the mats. Through rolling (BJJ sparring), we learn over time how to be unphased when we are on the defensive and how to be unrelenting when we are on the offensive. That is to say, we learn how to be calm and patient when we find ourselves under pressure and how to be tenacious and persistent when applying it.
When we are under pressure, when we are under attack, if we become impatient and lose our heads, we make mistakes that could result in our defeat. The squirming and flailing that come with fear only prove to make our situation worse, exposing us even further, giving our adversary more openings through which to attack. The path to escaping or reversing a bad position is found through both the maintaining of our own integrity and the calm, patient, and strategic application of leverage in the proper direction(s).
Once we are out of danger, we must begin moving forward unrelentingly, doing our best to stay ahead of the blocks, counters, and reversals that we will inevitably confront along our path. This is not the time to look back nor is it the time to be reckless, and we must always understand our own strengths and weaknesses so as to protect our flanks, but, once we gain traction, we can not give up our ground. If we are to be victorious in our endeavor, we must move decisively and aggressively forward, always being careful to neither over nor under-commit in the direction of our desired outcome.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Photo of Robert Van Valkenburgh at Kogen Dojo by Mike Oswald Photography
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