We are, at least most of us, programmed to win. Competitiveness drives us to be better, do more, try harder. The desire to win pushes us to heights otherwise unreachable. Unfortunately, the valley of defeat is just as deep as the mountain of success is high.
Whether it be a sport, competing for a promotion at work, a friendly chess match, or a simple game of tic-tac-toe, defeat brings with it a sense of loss, a failure to achieve what we set out to do. The harder we tried, the worse losing feels. We are told you get out what you put in.
Sometimes that's just not true.
We're all going to lose sometime.
Nobody wins every time. Everybody fails. In the most important contests of our lives, our battles against temptation and sin, we're all going to fall. Romans 3:23 says, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Even when we're set up to win, sometimes we lose. For soccer fans, the biggest tournament in the Western Hemisphere concluded last night. The number one ranked team in the world, with a player who by almost all accounts is the best player in the world, was set to win the championship. They wanted it. They needed it. They put everything they had into getting it.
They lost.
We're all human.
We all have weaknesses. We all have bad days, lapses of judgment, and make bad decisions. We mess up, fall down, trip over our own feet. We slip. We slide. We don't do what we know we should, and go down paths we know we shouldn't.
Everybody misses the mark from time to time. Everybody.
Even that greatest soccer player in the world. The game came down to penalty kicks. This great player had never missed a PK. He came up to the ball, put his foot through it, and missed the goal. One of the most important kicks in one of the most important games of his career, and he whiffed.
Life's like that.
You are going to lose. You are going to fail. One way or another. I'm not trying to hold you back or bring you down. I'm trying to prepare you. It's going to happen. That's not what's important. What's important is what you do next.
If you define yourself by your failures, then it's over. You'll never succeed. You'll never rise up again to the heights you might of reached. If you see yourself as a failure because you lost one time, you've failed yet again.
We are neither our losses, nor our victories. We are both. That's what makes us who we are. That player will be defined by the media, for a time, by his miss. In the same way, the world will try to define you by your failure. Don't let it. You're more than that.
It doesn't matter if it was the most important effort of your life to date. If you failed, you failed. It happens to everyone. Even the greatest mess up. What's makes them the greatest is that, after they fail, they get up, dust themselves off, and try again. They learn from their mistakes. They gain strength through trials. They come back and do it again. And again. And again.
Learn from your failures.
They're hard lessons, for sure, but often the best things in life don't come easy. Most of my greatest gains have come after the hardest knocks. It's not easy to get kicked around, but the lessons learned are not quickly forgotten.
Put that new knowledge to work, gain strength from the trial, and try again. Losing isn't easy, but if you give up, you'll never win again.
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