Athletes Who Hate to Lose More Than They Love Winning Must Learn This
A critical mindset lesson young athletes must learn if they want to progress to college athletics is how to lose. All competitive athletes hate losing. However, if this hate is stronger than the love of winning it will stunt an athlete’s growth.
Therefore, athletes must learn how to manage their mindset around hating to lose. There is no way to get around the fact that an athlete must risk losing before they can win on a new level. Therefore, if an athlete hates losing more than they love winning, there’s a chance they will choose either to find a way to avoid competing or not give their best effort when they must “punch above their weight.” This debilitates an athlete’s growth as getting to the next level is never the goal for athletes who hate losing more than they love winning if they can remain undefeated on their current level.
If this is a mindset issue you are facing or know an athlete who is dealing with this issue, I suggest using this quote below as a conversation starter to shift one’s mindset.
Failing doesn’t make you a failure. Failing makes you a competitor. Every competitor fails. If you lay it on the line, you will come up short at times. Failure is a part of competing, and embracing that fact is an important component of toughness. Tough people fail, but tough people are not failures. The only failures are those who give up, or give in.
– Jay Bilas, former professional basketball player, coach, and current ESPN college basketball analyst
What makes this Bilas quote so important for athletes to embrace is the significance of his highlighting the importance of being a competitor, and the reminder that you can’t be a competitor if you don’t risk losing. Moreover, elite athletes are more defined by being competitors than winners.
Yes, winning is important. However, winning is not what differentiates elite athletes from average and good athletes. Everybody likes to win and hates to lose, but everybody does not like to compete.
Elite Athletes Embrace the Competitor’s Mindset
Those who hate to lose more than they like to win, prefer and easy win over an unworthy competitor over a tough loss against a worthy competitor. These athletes don’t have a competitor’s mindset. Competitors don’t view an easy win over an unworthy competitor as better than a tough loss against a worthy competitor. Competitors are grateful for that tough loss against a worthy competitor.
This difference in hating to lose vs. loving to win is a product of the outcome vs. process mindset. If an athlete’s mindset is one that sees the purpose of competition as a quest to beat someone else, then they have an outcome mindset. On the other hand, if an athlete’s mindset is one that sees the purpose of competition as a quest to test themself, then they have a process mindset.
This mindset differentiation has a big impact on how people live their life. In fact, research suggest that those with an outcome mindset are less satisfied with their life than those with a process mindset. Therefore, even beyond sports, it’s worth investing in shifting one’s mindset from outcomes to process.
For athletes, I recommend making this shift by adopting the mindset of the original meaning of competition. In the classic sports psychology book Flow in Sports: The keys to optimal experiences and performances, authors Susan A. Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explain this mindset:
It is useful to remember that the word competition came from the two Latin words con petire, which meant “to search together.” The idea was that the best way to find out how good your skills were was to match them against the skills of another person. The point of competition was not to beat someone else, but to search out the best in yourself.
Simply stated, you can’t be the best if your goal is not to be at your best. Moreover, you can’t be at your best without competing against those who challenge you to give your best effort. Furthermore, you don’t know if you are giving your best effort until you lose to someone who is better.
It’s at this point when you find out how much of a competitor you truly are. If you love winning more than you hate losing, you challenge yourself until you win at that next level. If you hate losing more, you quit and never learn how to win at that next level.