I find it easy to be a gracious winner. How about you? It’s much harder to be a gracious loser. That’s especially true if we want very much to win, we barely lose, we think we “should” have won, we don’t like the winner, and we lose control of our emotions and behavior.
Is there a way to become a good loser (a “good sport” sounds better)? Yes. A student and I did a study with teen athletes who had just lost a team sports game. We randomly assigned the athletes to either a coping intervention or no intervention. The coping intervention involved prompting the athletes to think about something they did well during the game or to think about another game when they won. The results were that the athletes in the intervention showed better mood than the control athletes. That study was published in the journal “Sport Psychology” (see reference below). These same sorts of methods can help a person avoid acting like a poor sport after losing in a competition, whether in sports, politics, office politics, business, war, etc. The key elements:
1. Keep the loss in perspective. Often losses that upset us have no practical significance (here I think of my lunchtime tennis losses). A single loss in the context of a lifetime of wins and losses and many, many other experiences is usually insignificant.
2. Recognize that no one wins all the time, and in fact winning all the time could get boring.
3. Think of how you feel when you see someone lose and then act like either a good sport or a bad sport.
4. If you want a victory, consider a victory your gracious behavior after losing (this behavior that can have practical impact in the social realm of life).
5. Try to set a good model for others around you by being a gracious loser. What better way to elevate yourself in your own eyes?
6. Look on the bright side of your experience with losing. Did you learn something valuable? Did you improve yourself in some way? What did you do well? Did you benefit in some way?
How do you act when you lose? When you show grace in defeat, how do you manage to do that?
John Malouff, PhD, Assoc Prof of Psychology
Here is a reference for the article:
I agree with the challenges of being a poor loser. I was an elite athlete as a teenager, winning most things, travelling with teams, world record, sports scholarship … I was pretty cool when people played “head games” on me, because I usually won. But then, roll forward to parenthood, playing “games” with the kids … I’d been sneakily modified, without my knowing, I was actually really really competitive. And now I was having to see games, as games to be played, not won at all cost.
It’s still a challenge, but in my twenties I had discovered many sports/activities that were about individual performance, or team performance, or else: surfing remote breaks, rock-climbing, mountaineering, back-country skiing, solo hiking …. the need to succeed was replaced by a recharge with nature, and occasionally a need to survive. If you couldn’t make a climb, retreat was an option that had its own rewards – it wasn’t win at all costs.
P.S. I admit to enjoying, actually really enjoying, being on the winning team at a school trivia night fundraiser, after swearing I wouldn’t even attend (but we did beat a table that was stacked for success!). I’m sure I would have been gracious in defeat (but not to that table of experts) … damn, it’s still there ..
Hi Michael. Competition can be exciting and motivating. The problem is that for every winner, there is at least one loser. So for me a little competition goes a long way. Noncompetitive activities can also be exciting and motivating. I like setting goals for myself, e.g., a time for a run. As long as I keep the goals realistic, I usually succeed, and the occasional failure actually helps provide motivation.
I just saw a memorable article about terms individuals use to mean “defeat.” There are many, and they are not pretty. Sports competition allows us to apply aggression in a socially acceptable manner (safer than combat, anyway). Here is a link to the article:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27978489