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10 Amazing Ways to Win When You Lose

August 1, 2023

Who doesn’t want to win when you lose? Losing stings. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t speaking honestly. No one likes to lose. Yet you can flip this around. Here are ten ways to win when you lose.

Learning how you win when you lose requires a minor mindset shift. It’s not difficult, and it will become easier with practice.

1. Win when you lose: It’s not losing if you learn something.
If everybody loses at one time or another, the key is to profit from the experience. If all you do is grouse over your bad luck or just the wrong timing, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Figure out what went wrong and learn from it. If you come away with a better understanding of what caused this failure, you’re one step ahead when doing it better the next time. Already you’ve turned a loss into the first part of a win, which helps you succeed.

2. Losing can spur you to renew your commitment.
How much do you want to succeed at the action or endeavor you failed? With the right mindset – wanting a successful outcome – you can rededicate yourself and renew your commitment to the goal. This is part of what it takes to develop a winning strategy and reinforce a winning mentality.

3. Win when you lose: Call on your strengths after you lose.
Losing isn’t pleasant in the best of times. In the worst times, losing can seem like the world is against you. Don’t fall prey to that self-defeating line of thinking. Instead, list your strengths and use them. Some, no doubt, are strengths you haven’t used for a long time. Call on your strengths now. They will reinvigorate your willingness to keep going, to challenge yourself to win again.

4. Remember you never give up.
This isn’t the first time you’ve lost. It’s also not in you to give up. Remember those hurdles you worked so hard to overcome and continued despite how tough it was? Those were little losses, but you remained steadfast and refused to give up. You will win again with this can-do attitude. Keep at it, and you’ll be at the finish line before you know it. Boost your perseverance skills. Keep at it, and you’ll be at the finish line before you know it.

5. Win when you lose: Competition makes you sharp.
If everyone had the same amount of talent and ability, the world would be a boring place. Thankfully, there’s competition. Seeing what others do:

• Sharpens your skills
• Amplifies your determination
• Increases motivation
• Keeps you engaged

Do you want to succeed? Are you in it to win? Pay attention to your competition, even self-competition, and you’ll soon win again. This is another instance where you win when you lose.

6. Once you’ve lost, you have greater compassion – because you know how it feels.
No one likes an arrogant winner. It takes humility – losing – to realize how it feels not to succeed. Since you have lost, you now know how the other person feels. This helps make you a better person, one with compassion and empathy. When you’re in the winner’s circle again, this compassion will help keep your inflated ego at bay.

7. Win when you lose: Look at the broader picture to gain perspective.
It may be tough to see much past the recent loss. Yet that’s exactly what you need to do after you lose. You’ll never be motivated to continue if you can’t gain some perspective to see the broader picture. Your world isn’t a narrow confine or a box you can’t escape. It’s wide open and waiting for you to discover. This should be enough to inspire and motivate you to keep going. Recognize that this most recent loss is one step to success.

8. Realize that you’re already invested.
You’ve already put significant effort into what didn’t work well. In this, you’re already invested. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to profit from the effort you’ve put forth and find new ways of approaching the task. Refresh your memory with what worked well before and modify or adapt those strategies and techniques to the task.

9. Sharing experiences with your network can help you gain new insights.
What you need is a separate set of eyes and ears. By sharing your recent loss experience with your network, you might learn a few things that can help you get back to winning. Talking over what happened and listening to suggestions and techniques that worked for others is often enough to get you winning again. The loss will also feel less painful when you listen to how others came back from losing.

10. Win when you lose: Hold on to your dreams.
In the darkest times, dreams keep us going. Those long-held and dearly prized dreams are nature’s way of pushing us to keep going, especially when things look the least favorable. Your dream may take a little longer, but if you hold fast to it and take small steps toward achieving it, you’re making progress. This is a sign that you’re a winner, even though you may have lost a thousand times before and will again. Hold fast to that dream, and you will achieve it.