Choose Your Losses

You’re going to lose. Sometimes, inevitably. And when you do, there’s a cost – to your attitude, your energy, your overall mental resilience.

You can – and absolutely should – build up your resilience. You should get used to losing, and make losing not hurt as bad. You should build up a tolerance, in other words. Work on yourself. But no matter how good you get at it, you can only minimize the psychic cost of losing, you can’t eliminate it.

And that’s why you should choose your losses carefully. Don’t lose for no reason.

First, make sure the competition (whatever it is) is meaningful. Would winning be a great boon? Then the risk of losing is worth it. Would losing devastate you in more ways than one? Be careful. Spend your risk like a budget.

Don’t compete just to compete – in other words, don’t lose just for the sake of losing. Know the rules. Know how to play. An early, easy loss to learn the rules (or build that tolerance!) is fine. But if you’re in a slump to begin with, do some building before you do some gambling.

You’ve gotta lose. Lose smart, when you do.