You Gotta Love Losing

You gotta love losing:

You gotta love losing.

You have to embrace it for what it is. When you lose, understand it, learn from it and move on.

You can only achieve ultra success when you’ve lost over and over again.

***

I’m writing this on May.31.21, the day the Leafs blew a 3-1 lead to the Montreal Canadiens in the NHL playoffs.

The Maple Laughs have not won a hockey series since 2004.

They haven’t won a Stanley cup since 1967.

They blew a 4-1 lead in the 3rd period of Game 7 against the Boston Bruins, where Boston scored 2 goals with an empty net.

My entire life, this team has sucked. 

Yet this is not new. I’ve grown up with losing my entire life.

I have been a huge sports fan ever since 2003. My entire childhood, all of the Toronto sports teams sucked.

When I say sucked, I mean they were the worst sports city in North America.

The Leafs were/still are a disaster.

The Raptors sucked and used to get called Barney the Dinosaur.

The Jays never won a playoff series (till that Joey Bats homerun).

I used to cheer for draft lottery nights and seeing Toronto players on the bench in All Star games.

But we kept going.

The owners hired and fired new people. New players were brought in, old left and they kept going.

It all turned when the Blue Jays were a few outs away from making it to the World Series.

Then the Toronto Raptors did the impossible and won an NBA title.

Toronto finally won.

***

This weekend I had a terrible sports weekend.

I played my brother in tennis and lost 6-1. This was a guy I used to beat and now I’m the inferior opponent. It wasn’t just that I lost 6-1 but that several games I was up 40-0. I blew it.

The same day, I played golf with my dad. Our handicaps are in the high single digits and we usually have a very close game. This time was different.

I ended up losing 8-0 in match play, shooting in the mid 90s, a score I haven’t gotten in years. We’ve been playing match play against each other for the last 5 years and I’ve never had this happen to me besides one time. I normally hit 280 yard drives on average and yet on this day, I didn’t hit the ball straight once.

The entire time, I embraced it. I kept going. I reminded myself I needed to lose. Everyone needs to lose. Everyone should understand what it’s like to be at the bottom.

Only at the bottom do you understand how to get better. How to take responsibility for your actions and continue. Even in the darkest of days, there is always light. You just have to keep pushing and never give up. Keep embracing the failure. Life without failure and struggle is a boring life not worth living.

To live a fulfilled life, you need failure. Only when you fail do you really appreciate the success.

Embrace failure. You gotta learn to love losing.