Are you a sore loser?

From a very young age, we are exposed to competition, it could be between our parents, siblings, peers in school and as we grow older, colleagues in the workplace, we tend to gravitate towards the desire to be winners and to come out on top in all we do. It is normal for us to question […]

From a very young age, we are exposed to competition, it could be between our parents, siblings, peers in school and as we grow older, colleagues in the workplace, we tend to gravitate towards the desire to be winners and to come out on top in all we do.
 It is normal for us to question our abilities and senses anytime someone beats us to anything or even surprises us to do something that we never thought possible.
Many people have said only lazy people are beaten in anything and if you are a brilliant person, you have to be on top of your game every time but is that always true? School children are pushed by their teachers to become the best and when anyone achieves this, they are rewarded and held in high esteem both by their peers and their superiors, so it is in the adult world, everyone likes a winner but will never cut the loser some slack; hence, the competitive nature of our world today.
While it remains a good thing to want to excel at all times, it is rarely possible, even with the most intelligent beings, once in a while, we all have to taste the bitter pill of losing, after all, how are we going to be kept humble and avoid thinking of ourselves as gods amongst men if we keep winning every day?
The following quote by former road racing cyclist, Lance Armstrong, sums it all up, “When you win, you don’t examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily and wrongly assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you have worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn’t particularly define you beyond those characteristics.
 “Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others or do you own the loss? Do you analyse your failure or just complain about bad luck? If you are willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance but your internal workings too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be .Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.”
How do you react to failure or losing? Do you get upset and blame everyone around including yourself? Do you feel cheated? Do you feel like those who won what you lost deserve it less than you do? Or do you decide to do better next time and put a smile on your face?
Whatever way you decide to react to loss speaks volumes about your general attitude. None of us wants to come off as narcissistic to those around us, so it would be better to handle failure as well as we could, with a winning attitude, that is.

Eremionkhale wrote from Abuja