Greetings folks and welcome to another edition of “The
Diplomat’s Report.” I hate losing. As much as I love winning, I may hate losing
more. Losing, to me, feels like a horse kicking me in the stomach. Losing
tastes like garbage, draped in vomit, peppered with horseradish and manure.
Losing feels like the flu, a stomach virus and acute, explosive diarrhea combined.
If I had to sum it up in a word, losing “sucks”. Yet and still it’s a valuable
and necessary part of life.
I’ve always been hyper-competitive. While I have 4 siblings (3
brothers, 1 sister), I grew up with my two brothers closest to me in age; my
older brother by 7 years and my younger brother by 14 months. In essence, I
grew up like a middle child always feeling a need to prove myself. I felt a
need to prove myself worthy of the attention that my younger sibling received
and to be as strong and smart, if not stronger and smarter, than my older
brother. Life was a constant struggle. My early childhood involved me trying to
impose my will on my younger brother while being met with a stiff reproach by
my older brother. I spent many afternoons fighting both brothers…at the same
damn time. My older brother did his best not to hurt me while simultaneously
reminding me that he has was the older brother and that he was the boss. However,
I did my best to unseat him from his throne and show him that I didn’t give a
damn. My attempts, though energetic, forceful and seemingly unrelenting, were
futile.
Despite my lack of success in these battles with my older
brother, I learned some very valuable lessons: that I need to fight for what I
want and that I should never give up. I also learned that no one could beat by
behind like he did, except my 6 foot 3 inch nearly 300 pound father, so I did
not have to ever acquiesce to anyone other than those 2 people. This courage
served me well at school, in the neighborhood, in sports and in competition. Unfortunately,
one of the things I didn’t take from those early beatings was how to deal with
failure. This probably happened because, to me, when I lost to my big brother,
I wasn’t failing; I was succeeding at showing him that I wouldn’t back down and
that I was just as strong and tough as he was. So when I worked hard and performed
well but my hard work didn’t result in a victory, often times I was shattered.
Losing is difficult for me to understand because I was
taught that if I work hard, train hard and prepare harder than everyone else,
success is inevitable. How, then, could anyone explain my lack of success at
times when I had executed the formula to perfection, double checked it and
demonstrated that perfection in all my work? I witnessed others try and fail,
but they weren’t me. I believed that I was the best and that, as such, I should
never lose. However, my mother taught me, and it eventually set in, that no one
wins all the time. She taught me that sometimes, even when I’m the best, I
won’t always come out on top; but, that shouldn’t stop me from trying to be the
best. That was a hard lesson to learn and one that I’m still digesting today;
yet, it’s something that I’ve never forgotten. This lesson taught me to work
hard, train hard and make any race, competition or decision between me and
anyone else an easy one to result in my favor.
I work hard to be the best in everything that I do in hopes
of winning and being the best, and not taking second. I work the long hours,
consume the immense amounts of caffeine and push the bounds of my limitations
because of my desire to excel. When the outcome doesn’t match my preparation, it’s
often difficult for me to reconcile.
Over time, I’ve been able to rationalize not being crowned the
winner every time I feel like I should have. I’ve been able to accept coming in
somewhere less than first place. But what I have never accepted is losing.
Losing sucks. When I’ve taken the moments to look back over my life, my
successes and my failures, I realized that I’ve learned more from my failures
than I have my successes. While success feels good, looks good and sounds good,
there is no better teacher than failure. Failure teaches you what not to do in
the future so as to avoid this inner turmoil that occurs when you come up short.
Failure teaches you all the ways to NOT be successful.
No matter how rich or poor you may have started in life. No matter
how educated or uneducated your parents may have been and no matter your race,
religion, gender or ethnicity, adversity is a common denominator for us all. We
all will encounter losing, we all will fail, and we all will be derailed. More
important than our encounters with these events will be our response to them.
Since these moments in life are inevitable we must learn from them. Since we
know that it will rain during the rainy season and snow in New York during the
winter, what do we do? What lessons do we garner from the heartache, heartbreak
and storms that life brings our way?
The challenges we face in life don’t just occur so that we
have a story to tell, but so that we have a lesson to learn. Take the time to see
obstacles for what they are: building blocks to success and opportunities for
greatness; for greatness lies in overcoming obstacles. No one who is successful
has gotten to that level by taking the easy route. The easy route is crowded
and full of people who decide to take the path of least resistance to get to a
place very few get to; success. However, the road to success is scarcely populated
and full of challenges, obstacles and people who welcome adversity rather than
run away. We can only become stronger by experiencing a constant tearing down
and rebuilding of ourselves.
Losing sucks; I know. It hurts, it smells, it tastes bad and
we would rather do without it. But since we have to deal with it, we may as
well learn from it. Rather than focusing on the things we can’t control--the
hurricanes, the tornadoes, the snowstorms, death, financial loss and
heartbreak-we should focus on the things we can control-- our response to those
less than desirable moments. How you respond and what you do in the face of
adversity will define you and your life. You have two options: you can respond
lying down and choose to stay there because it hurts too much to get up, or you
can stand up and respond like a champion. The choice is yours. Choose wisely.
Stay Up and Be Blessed!
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