Sunday, July 22, 2018

Losing with grace

It can be tough to be a gracious winner.  It's way tougher to lose with grace.  Being gracious is a choice and an important one.

There are a couple  thoughts I want to remember and write down that I had recently.   They are related to being happy.

The first is the idea of winning AND losing graciously.  Winning graciously is relatively easy.  Losing graciously on the other hand is much more difficult.  Sometimes things aren't going to work out the way I'm thinking.  There are likely a number of things that went exactly right to get to that place where something didn't.  It's a choice to focus on what went right and not what didn't.  It is so much easier to frame anything as winning and easier to be gracious.  And easier to be happy.

The second idea is that we are all connected.  There are no "winners" and "losers".  This is way easier written than changing my thinking completely; winning and losing is just a poor way of framing a situation.  It's hard not to think of a lot of situations that way.  In the mean time, if anyone "lost" then someone "won".  However, it doesn't have to be zero sum.  Since we are all connected, being happy for someone else is a path to be happy for ourselves.

Every time things don't go my way, it is an opportunity to be happy for someone else and be happier in the process.  

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