From The CC Vault: Learning to Lose Graciously

by William Given

Unsportsmanlike conduct is all around us and it is seemingly spreading like a virus. This morning I read another story in the news about a youth sporting tournament put asunder due to poor sportsmanship. It started with the adults, parents and coaches, then filtered down to the children. As a result, the police were called in to diffuse the situation and restore order. The article indicated that “the players returned to their homes with no championship trophy or tournament medals, but instead, they took only the memories of their unsportsmanlike conduct.”

I can’t help but cringe every time I read such an article or see it on a television news broadcast. It seems the level of unsportsmanlike conduct and incivility to others continues to grow all around us in our society. Poor sportsmanship does not just manifest itself at youth sporting events. Think of all the incidents of road rage where anger and frustrations quickly escalate. Poor sportsmanship can also lead to people cheating to get ahead or being dishonest in their business dealings.

Stories of poor behavior do not seem to surprise us anymore. You can’t help but ask “where do people learn to act the way they do?” I believe the answer is “in the home.”

I believe that virtuous behavior needs to be taught in the home. And while I do not want to trivialize any incident of poor sportsmanship, I suggest that you have to learn to lose graciously in order to learn how to win.

There’s something counterintuitive about competing: You have to learn how to lose in order to win. How can that be? It doesn’t make sense. That sounds contrary to common sense.

The Art of Letting Go

Winners hate to lose, I do. But I’ve learned that if you compete at anything, especially dog shows, you are going to lose a good portion of the time. So you had best learn how to handle it. Trust me, if you do not learn how to cope with a loss and put it behind you, it will haunt you to the point that you will not be able to win.

Let us say, you have been on a good winning streak with your ring partner. You have been placing at or near the top, consistently. Then suddenly in one weekend, you find yourself at the bottom of the pack. Maybe you messed up. Perhaps your dog did. It is okay to get angry about it. It is okay to be sad over it. You have to keep it short and to yourself, then put it behind you and get back on track.

Time and time again, I have seen juniors finish out of the ribbons at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning and they are still sullen when walking into the ring on Sunday. You have to learn to let go of a loss. You cannot afford to drag it around behind you like a millstone or it will adversely affect your performance.

You cannot change the past. It’s done, finished, over. Focus instead on the future, you can have some influence there. Also, I want you to remember that with something as subjective as junior showmanship you do not have to make a mistake and your dog does not have to mess up to finish out of the ribbons. It is quite possible that your competitors just had a better than average performance. On this day, they excelled. Be okay with that. Sometimes it is just as important to be lucky as it is to be good.

A Change of Focus

It is good to learn from a mistake. I truly believe that. But if you obsess over it, you will create a vicious cycle. Here is a common scenario. I’ll use setting up as an example. On the first day of a show, your dog moves his feet just as the judge walks up, you’re not quite prepared for it but you place his feet back into proper position as quickly as you can. Going into the second day, all you can think about is, “He’s going to mess up and move his feet again when the judge walks past.” And guess what? He does.

By dwelling on the negative, you practically made it happen. Instead, shake it off! Go jump on your bed and turn your music up loud. Have a pillow fight with a sibling or best friend. Do something so that you can release the beast. Then turn your focus off what happened in the past, and focus on having an outstanding performance tomorrow.

That is the difference between winners and losers. Losers dwell on yesterday’s loss. Winners focus on tomorrow’s victory.

Winners want to win. I absolutely want to win every class I enter. I hate losing but I have had to learn to live with it, a lot. You may want to punch a hole in the wall because you lost a class, but that is not going to change the fact that I lost. And then you have to fix the wall. You have to shake it off and go win the next time.

You can actually turn a negative outcome into a positive one by using a loss to energize your will to win. Review in your mind those things you did right, fix those things that went wrong. Go do your best in the ring and be prepared to win. By using these strategies, over time, I have seen young people learn how to lose graciously.

Click here to read the full article in our digital edition.

Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=268851

Posted by Liz on Jul 29 2023. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.