John Wooden Quote Perfectly Explains Why Sore Losers are Also Failures
There are three types of losers. 1) Those who accept a loss, but don’t learn from it. 2) Those who accept a loss and learn from it. 3) Those who don’t accept a loss and don’t learn from it.
Furthermore, there is no fourth category of those who don’t accept a loss but do learn from it because this is a contradiction. You can’t learn from a loss you don’t accept because when you don’t accept it you place the blame for the loss on someone or something else. As such, the focus is on things outside of one’s control and you can only learn from a loss when you focus on the things you control. Thus, this fourth category is an impossibility.
With this in mind, there is no doubt that category three with those who don’t accept their losses are the sore losers in the bunch. Unquestionably, sore losers are the worst type of loser because sore losers never accept the blame for anything, and they never learn. Sore losers always think it’s someone else’s fault and even in a loss they think they know everything.
These traits make sore losers awful competitors, and it also makes them perennial failures. John Wooden explains why perfectly in one of his classic quotes.
You can make mistakes, but you aren’t a failure until you start blaming others for those mistakes. When you blame others you are trying to excuse yourself. When you make excuses you can’t properly evaluate yourself. Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable.