The Difference Between Winners and Losers
The way you lose determines your chances to win.
I competed in my first wrestling match when I was 12.
I didn’t know how it was going to go.
I don’t think any amount of training can really prepare you for what you experience the first time you compete in a combat sport. I wasn’t prepared.
Within 30 seconds of shaking my opponent’s hand, I was thrown on my back, where I squirmed around for a little bit, gave up a bunch of “points” that I didn’t really understand, and pinned. There were hours of anxiety and mental build-up only for me to get pinned and lose right away.
My coach couldn’t even really give me any advice. I went back to the corner of the bench, sobbed, and sat by myself.
It was kind of like of like growing up, in a way. I learned just how little I really knew and how weak I really was.
But about 15 years after that first match, I’m able to look back on it with hindsight, clarity, and a few lessons that I’ve learned from losing way more matches on way bigger stages.
Let’s talk about the difference between winners and losers.
The personal development aspect of losing in combat sports.
I saw a popular video online the other day about how Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a great sport for kids.
It is, but I think that the reasons why are a bit different than most people think.
Our culture has this conception of martial arts being hyper-disciplined, forcing kids to focus, and being extremely strict. Jiu-Jitsu is not like that. It does not teach people to focus because there’s a coach telling them to.
It teaches people life lessons because the negative consequences of not doing what you’re supposed to do in Jiu-Jitsu (or wrestling or whatever) hurt a lot more than in other sports. You experience the negative side effects of not knowing things firsthand.
BJJ is not the same as every other sport. All sports have a coach who wants its athletes to pay attention to them.
In Jiu-Jitsu (and in wrestling too), you learn the hard way the consequences of being bad. It’s literally sink or swim.
You learn that if you are not focused, if you are not strong, and if you are not resilient, you won’t just lose, you’ll end up like I did in my first wrestling match. You’ll have your will crushed by someone else who does it better.
Grappling arts teach you how to win (on and off the mat).
When you lose in wrestling or BJJ, the thing that really sucks is there is no easy way out.
You can’t blame the goalie for getting scored on, you can’t blame your teammates for not working together, and you really just can’t blame anyone — except for yourself for not being prepared.
When I was wrestling, this personal development mindset was instilled in me. I learned that if I wanted to excel, I needed to focus, train hard, and most importantly, accept that failure is a part of the process of success.
This is what winners do that losers do not.
Losers blame other people. They blame circumstances. They don’t take responsibility for their failures.
Winners take responsibility for everything when they lose, and when they win, they note all the people who it took for them to get to where they are.
See, in grappling, when you win, it’s easy to take all the credit for yourself. You won. No one else did, but of course, it takes a village to succeed.
This is the life lesson that competition in combat sports can teach you.
Winning and losing (even in individual pursuits) require other people. When you fail, take responsibility. When you win, do so with grace.
How to cultivate a winner’s mind.
I wrote an ebook a while back called The Winning Mind.
Either way, here are a few things that I do that will help you cultivate a mindset that will allow you to be more resilient, take failure less personally, and eventually, win more:
Gratitude practices (sure, they’re corny but they work. I journal)
Mindfulness practices to establish a presence in pressure situations
Coachability so that you maximize the knowledge that is in front of you
The ability to zoom out — this will help you realize how small even the biggest failures can seem
A work ethic because you can’t compete unless you’re willing to grind a bit
These are things that I have learned to do from combat sports, and they apply to pretty much everything else that I do in my life.
My writing is better because I think about it like a sport. Hell, even my relationship is better because I take some of the lessons that I have learned in combat sports and apply them.
Obviously, you don’t want to be a competitor all the time, but there are lessons that you can extract from the competitive playing field and apply to your personal life.
Competition helps you build:
Resilience
Focus
Discipline
Presence
Grace
And all of these things will help you elsewhere in your life.
Closing Thoughts
When I wrestled, it took me a really long time to get decent.
Nowadays, I’m pretty good at Jiu-Jitsu. I’ve competed at very high levels, I trained with very good grapplers, and the sport has completely transformed my life. I have figured out, in many cases, how to win. I have also figured out how to lose well and how to learn from those losses.
And that really takes me to the final lesson on the difference between winners and losers.
Winners don’t let a loss define them.
When I was in the early days of competing in Jiu-Jitsu, I thought that a loss would ruin me. That it would hurt my career. Nowadays, however, I just see even the worst loss as nothing but a bump in the road on the journey to becoming a higher version of myself. No finality in anything unless you create a sense of it.
If you want longevity, you need to protect your body and your mind. Most people do the former and forget the latter.
Don’t be like most people.
The Grappler’s Diary is sponsored by BJJ Mental Models, the world’s #1 Jiu-Jitsu podcast!
This week’s episode features Sebastian Brosche! Sebastian is a BJJ black belt, the founder of the legendary platform Yoga for BJJ, and also the founder of his new project, Teach Grappling.
In this episode, we discuss knowledge organization, effective teaching strategies, curriculum development, standardization, instructor education, and the future of Jiu-Jitsu education.
To listen, look up BJJ Mental Models wherever you listen to your podcasts or just hit this link.
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