Winning by Losing

I think we look down on losing too much, sometimes to the extent of wishing we hadn't even started if all we were going to do was lose. As if winning provides the only beneficial outcome.

Winning by Losing. 

A blog about how to win.... by losing

Losing is the best thing to happen to human kind since sliced bread. It teaches us so much! Think back on any given failure in your life and I guarantee that there was a lesson to be learned there. Think about the times you won.. I'm sure there was something to learn as well, though it might not be as obvious. Now think of the times you were handed a participation trophy.... What was the lesson learned there? If we are celebrated for mediocrity, why would we try to get better? Where's the motivation? I hope we don't get stuck behind a bunch of participation trophies taking away our drive to improve. (cheesy alert) I hope you can give yourself permission to dream.

Clear eyes, Full heart, Can't lose.

Clear eyes - having a vision, having clarity, knowing your identity and comprehending your potential. With this increased vision, we will find the motivation. When you get the big picture, it makes the small steps seem more important and meaningful.

Full heart - if you want to improve/win/succeed, you need to put your heart into it. You're not going to go from who you are to who you want to become over night, its going to take many steps; many of which will fail. But success isn't the absence of failure, rather its going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm. Put your heart into it! If two people perform the exact same tasks, while the tangible result may be the same, the one that puts his heart into it will be changed. You are your greatest project. Who are you becoming?

Okay back to this losing business... Losing is hard, and it definitely isn't fun. It is met with so much criticism that it's hard to appreciate the experience gained. Learn to separate criticism into opinions and facts. Take the opinions and just throw them away. Take the facts, and just put them on a shelf and learn from them. The more we consider failure as a tutor rather than a tragedy, we will not be held back by fear of rejection and disappointment. Instead we will relish every opportunity to grow and succeed. We will understand that failure exists to help us taste the bitter as to comprehend the sweet.

- gospel remix -

In D&C 19:18, 3rd Nephi 11:11, John 18:11, Christ drank the bitter cup and suffered every failure, disappointment, and pain we will ever experience. It passes all my understanding how it works... but because of Him, through our many struggles, mistakes and imperfections, we can be perfected. (perfected = winning, in gospel terms) (failing still equals failing in gospel terms...)

Its important to know that He loves you just the way you are. But even more important to know that He loves you enough NOT to let you stay the way you are. He has much bigger plans for you, you're an heir of God! By yourself you can make a smidge. Christ can help you reach your divine potential, be refined, purified, and perfected through the atonement. Repentance doesn't just allow you to go from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm, but grow from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm. 

"If we could design the life for ourselves, we’d plan for Happiness, success, and ease. Maybe, if we’re feeling up to it we would include some mild difficulties that we could overcome easily. Because who wants to struggle, fail, be rejected, fall short, do hard things? If lived the life we wanted to live, we would always get accepted into medical school. Get that dream job on the first try. And marry our perfect soulmate with whom we’d never have an argument. We would never have to wrestle with a church calling. All our loved ones would remain heart and soul converted to the Gospel. And anyone we shared our testimony with would be baptized within the week. Our mothers wouldn’t get cancer. our fathers wouldn’t leave. Our siblings wouldn’t die in tragic accidents. We wouldn't lose babies in heart surgery. We would never have to wait on the lords timing. We would never develop any meaningful degree of patience, compassion, humility, endurance, discipline, selflessness, faith, hope or charity. We would return to our father in heaven in just about the same state that we were in when we left his presence: because we hadn’t experienced anything that requires change, growth, or our complete dependance on God." 

So, unless your life sounds like the one i just described, we are not living a life that we ourselves designed. This masterpiece of a life was divinely designed and has His fingerprints in every step of the way. We are living the lives God has planned for us, encountering trial after trial, failure after failure, yet providing opportunities for unmatched happiness and progression. So rest be assured, God will invite you to make changes. Just as prescription drugs say "Shake well before use",  we will probably be shaken up with failure right before we are to succeed. So if you're going through a bumpy road, hang tight, look for opportunities to grow!

Now go outside and fail at something!