(no subject)
"How do you learn to cope with doubt, and, more important, self-doubt? And how do you learn how to lose?
Trouble is, you're going to lose more than you're going to win, no matter who you are. Most of us overreact when we lose, and over-celebrate when we win, and I'm no exception. I have a love-hate relationship with losing: it makes me brooding and quarrelsome. But the fact is, a loss is its own inevitable lesson, and it can be just as valuable as a victory in the range of experiences, if you'll examine it.
When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You can easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But willing only measures how hard you've 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 the things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you won the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?
If you're 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 even more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for how you really are.
Maybe the difference between a boy and a grown man, and the difference between a chipped shoulder and nice smooth lines, is the way you handle yourself when you don't get what you want."
Trouble is, you're going to lose more than you're going to win, no matter who you are. Most of us overreact when we lose, and over-celebrate when we win, and I'm no exception. I have a love-hate relationship with losing: it makes me brooding and quarrelsome. But the fact is, a loss is its own inevitable lesson, and it can be just as valuable as a victory in the range of experiences, if you'll examine it.
When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You can easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But willing only measures how hard you've 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 the things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you won the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?
If you're 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 even more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for how you really are.
Maybe the difference between a boy and a grown man, and the difference between a chipped shoulder and nice smooth lines, is the way you handle yourself when you don't get what you want."