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The Seattle Seahawks played a great game yesterday and defeated the Denver Broncos 43-8.

I’ll be honest.

I was hoping the Broncos would win and revenge the 49er loss, but the Seahawks played well and they definitely deserved it.

Their loss got me thinking about the overlooked value that there is in losing.

We always hear that winning is everything.

But what about losing? 

I think the value of losing has been overlooked and looked down upon for too long.

And this has had a negative impact on us individually and as a society.

 

3 Lessons on Losing From the Denver Broncos 

What lessons can we learn from the Denver Broncos losing yesterday?

I think there are three important lessons:

1. Winning is rare, losing is common.

We all want to be winners, but no one wants to experience losing!

How realistic is that?

Winning is an infrequent experience in life. Losing is a frequent experience.

We know this is the reality of life, but for some reason we live a fantasy world where this fact is ignored. This is sad.

Why? Because when this happens, the only thing that losing can bring to us is anger and frustration.

When this happens we never gain the “hidden benefits” of losing. 

What can we do? We first need to face the reality of this first lesson – that winning is rare. Then we must learn the next lesson.

2. We need to learn how to handle losing because it is going to happen more often than winning.

We have become a society of “sore losers”.

From professional athletes to parents getting into fights at their kids’ games, the violence and fighting that regularly breaks out at sporting events reveals the sad fact that we don’t know how to handle losing. 

We are often told to prepare to win and we should. We’re told that we must prepare, because there’s no winning without preparation. And that is true!

But we are never told the important lesson that we must prepare for losing.

Now don’t misunderstand me. In saying we should prepare to lose, I don’t mean that we should expect to lose. That could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What I mean is that we should prepare ourselves to handle it and learn what to do with it when it happens – because it will.

If we don’t learn how to handle a loss, then it will be a wasted experience.

And that fact leads us to the most important lesson of all.

3.  We must not only learn how to handle losing, but we need to learn from each of our losses. 

This is the only way we can win the next time. 

I don’t agree with every thing that Napoleon Hill said. I think some of it was “out there” and completely wrong. 

But these two quotes from him that you’re about to see are very true and powerful.

Hill said, “Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.” 

If we do what the majority of people want to do, then we will forfeit the lessons that the losing can bring to us.

Lessons like:

• What our weaknesses are 
• Humility
• How to improve ourselves
• Persistence

 But if we do the opposite of the majority, then “losing” will graciously open its treasure chest to us and we will gain priceless riches from it. 

We will become better from it.

We will build perseverance.

We will become stronger and more determined. 

And those are the things that will allow you to ultimately win. 

As Napoleon Hill also said, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.”

 

True Defeat

So face the facts.

You will lose at times – both in your personal life and your business life.

Sometimes the losses will be devastating and embarrassing like the one the Denver Broncos experienced yesterday.

But if you are not willing to experience the loss, then you can never put yourself in the place to experience victory.

And that would be true defeat.

If you remember these three lessons, then your loses today will become stepping stones to greater wins tomorrow.

 

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