When Winning Hurts

If you're at the top, there is only one way to go: down.

Winning is not good. When you win, things happen which serve to undermine what you acheived when you won. People are too eager to please, and compliments rain upon you like November showers. And when there are dissenting voices, you tend not to hear (you're a champion after all, what's there to criticize?). Criticism isn't welcome, and genuine advice isn't that forthcoming when you are a winner.

Perhaps one reason why one listens less is because of the ego. The ego boost that comes from being at the top is blinding - the winner is seldom humble after having beaten the competition. The inflated ego only serves to reinforce one's own sense of superiority: what else is there to learn from others, especially the failures? The path carved out by the winner is surely the 'right' path.

Winners are really losers: they do not understand the importance of the lesson that is learnt with a loss. Only when you have lost before can you become a better winner. When you're winning, you may have a formula for why you're always doing that. But unless you learn what the wrong formulas are, you're never going to figure out why when your so-called winning formula doesn't work anymore (and you lose).

The lesson that comes with losing is well learnt, if learnt at all. That is why winners learn the most when they can learn from losers. That is why case studies of the losers tended to be more interesting that those of winners, for, after all, it is the pitfalls to avoid which are more noteworthy, and not the back-thumping self-congratulatory flatteries which add value.

Winners are unhappy unless they win again, and therein lies the problem: they're hard to satisfy. A loser will be really happy to have won, even once. A winner cannot abide by anything other than the champion's podium. Woe is the winner, for he can't see no other way in life. To win all the time is to be blind, obsessed, un-interesting. To win in an endeavour is to lose in most of all other pursuits in life. The winner loses more because of that, while the loser pursues other means of self-satisfaction.

Yes, I know this is turning into one big meaningless rant, but hey, see it from my point of view: I think the initial winners I have seen in my life don't adapt: they think they'll always be champions, and nothing brings them more back to earth when they realised that what they had achieved counted for little in the end. I'd much rather learn, adapt, and become a better person through my failures - not all battles are meant to be won: you need to know when to fight, when to concede, and most importantly, when to walk away.