What if I told you the secret to going undefeated in sports? Would you believe me if I promised you there is a surefire way to NEVER lose a match or game?
Well, there is, but it takes a lot of commitment and dedication, and perhaps a shift in your mindset, or in your beliefs about what a losing outcome means. Changing beliefs can be challenging, and not everyone is up for it. But if you are, read on….
The secret to never losing is making sure that you learn every single time a game, match, meet, contest, performance doesn’t turn out your way. Every single time. Now, of course you can also find ways to learn after victories, too, but I’m talking about being willing to identify and figure out at least three specific things you learn after every loss, even the most heart-breaking, gut-wrenching defeats.
YOU NEVER LOSE IF YOU LEARN. There it is, the secret, the special sauce of competing.
You never lose if you learn. Guaranteed. You will never lose again, if you commit and build a new habit to consciously learn from it. If – – it’s such a little word, but can be monumental for this practice. What I mean by committing and building a new habit is that you must take time to reflect, and write down at least three concrete and relevant things you learned from the loss. Be rigorous with yourself, and don’t blow it off! I have my players do weekly reflection sheets that ask them about their highlights and lessons. If they lose a match, this is a great place to reflect and write about what lessons they learned. Boom. That’s super valuable stuff right there.
We all know that one of the beautiful things about sports is the chance to learn skills for life, important things such as performance and relational skills (from my friends at What Drives Winning) that can help us in other areas of life, because they are transferable. In a sport like tennis, this is so true. Skills like focus, confidence, courage, resilience, or honesty, respect and patience. We can always learn skills from competition. In fact, in my life, I have found that I have learned my most important life lessons from my losses, not my victories. If done right, losing can help you get better faster. Who doesn’t want to get better faster? I’ve known athletes for whom a loss helped turn their season, or their whole career around. That’s huge.
But in order to learn, we need to have the right mindset to reflect, the right approach to be rigorous, and the right follow through to commit to it as a regular practice. This is where the challenge may come in. We need to be open, honest with ourselves, and willing & able to let go of our attachment to the result. This means letting go of any decisions we make about game outcomes and what they mean. This means detaching from the outcome, and trusting a process for improvement.
If I could tell you how you could go undefeated and get better faster, would that be worth a try? You never lose if you learn. Be Super. Start today!
