Healing Space | How to lose gracefully, and why

Someone who cannot bear a defeat is more likely to go through life with anger, resentment, irritability, and develop related stress and anxiety concerns. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

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Walking out on a losing team is not just bad manners, and being a sore loser, it is also indicative of an inability to deal with defeat in an equanimous manner. Someone who cannot bear a defeat is more likely to go through life with anger, resentment, irritability, and develop related stress and anxiety concerns.

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Why are some people gracious in defeat and why do some people react quite antagonistically? We’ve all witnessed those games when the match was a great fight to the finish, be it cricket or tennis, or a kid’s school event, when the win was upstaged by someone who had lost the game throwing a tantrum. McEnroe’s racket-throwing days come to mind.

Part of such behaviour is attention-seeking. First, when the loss is evident, the person/s who feel sore about it attempt to redirect attention back to themselves. That gives you a clue as to what the event was about, to begin with. It was never about that cliched phrase: ‘the glory of sport’. Any event that is purely for the game contains with it a foreknowledge of the possibility of loss. It is in fact only because we may lose that the game enthralls us. If it were a fixed match, with pre-decided scores and a set schedule of play to notch that up, what would be the point of watching Without uncertainty and possibility of loss, there is no game. If losing is not an option, then the game is about supremacy and not about the play.

Here's the problem with that: supremacy is about ego; it is about establishing oneself as better than others. 'Isn’t that the point?’ you may think. So, here’s the thing, why not round up a bunch of kindergartners and play with them? You’d win every time. Aha, you see, the point is not simply winning, and winning against, it’s about who you win against. We don’t pit ourselves just against anyone. We seek a worthy opponent, we want a good match, we want to lose to people whose game and technique we respect. Otherwise, there is no win worth crowing about. That’s why we fight through sub levels to reach them, there is a proven hierarchy of skill in the opposition. When you therefore lose to the chosen opponent and walk away, you disrespect the team, the skill, the game, the process, and yourself. You may as well have played against infants then.

We are always trying to teach our children how to win in life. They attend several coaching classes in a week for that express purpose. LinkedIn is full of startup gurus doling out free advice on how to make it big, how to get that funding, that contract, the placement. However, it is when these don’t work, like the many IIM students who did not secure a placement this year, that we begin to understand the value and causes of loss. Loss of opportunity, loss of game, loss of insight, or loss of connection. Loss also has a value. If we understand it, we can leverage it.

We tend to think it’s a straight path of the arrow, put in effort and we win a proportionate amount. But it is when we are on the losing side that we realise, it is not about one person’s effort. Often it’s the team synergy, it can be about weather, ground, humidity, moisture, collective mood, pitch, swing, wind, or simply that the other team doesn’t seem to be affected by any of it in the way we are. In life this could be losing out despite our best efforts due to the economy, a strike, transport issues, global economic factors, social factors, a whole pandemic, and just sheer luck - a coin toss. We are constantly standing to lose and it feels terrible – we’re allowed to feel bad about it, nobody likes to lose - but how we use the loss to understand ourselves and our world is the reflection of a healthy mindset going into the game.

Above all, coping with loss is an attitude of respect towards ourselves more than the world. That we do not see ourselves as one solitary point of effort and we work in coordination and harmony with a variety of factors that work with us and are sometimes not in our favour. That we respect our environment and what opposes us, because it and we are worthy. Understanding loss is understanding the cyclicity and rhythm of the world.

How to lose gracefully