I have always been known as a ‘Good winner’ and whilst I am able to produce a mumbled “Congratulations” accompanied by a forced smile and a limp handshake for my vanquisher I, like many, have rarely meant it.
I suspect that humans are not designed to lose gracefully primarily because of Mr Darwin’s concept of ‘The survival of the fittest’ and we are hard wired to survive which in terms of being competitive means we want to win.
Have you ever watched the Academy Awards or BAFTA Award shows, even the Olympic Games medal ceremonies…..just take a look at the losers’ faces and body language and you will instantly recognise the opposite of losing gracefully.
The cartoon character Peanuts once said;
“It doesn’t matter who wins or loses…. until You lose!”
Indeed, the ability to lose gracefully is inversely proportional to how much you care about winning. So, the less you care about winning the better you will be at losing. This means that if you are a ‘non-competitive’ person, which in my humble view means you need a slap, you will be admired by the modern ‘woke’ PE teacher who will extoll the virtues of the ‘Personal best’ and competing against yourself. Indeed I have heard that some Primary School sports days feature one hundred metre races where both everybody and nobody wins!
Maybe I have got it wrong, is it possible that I should teach my child to be apologetic about winning a race? No, sorry, I think not!
My old man once told me before a school race that if I didn’t intend with every fibre of my being to beat everyone else in the field and WIN then I shouldn’t even bother to put my trainers on. Armed with a fiery hot desire and utter self belief I raced…….and came last but I came last with the comfort of knowing that I had given it my best shot….I had failed to win but I failed with no excuses, no apologies and no fear and I could live with that.
In my thirty year career as a Special Needs Teacher I saw fear everyday; fear of failure, fear of looking stupid or uncool, fear of others making fun of a mistake. This fear was often so strong it could condition a child (or an adult) to decide to not take the risk of trying or to adopt a flippant approach with the verbal caveat,
“I am no good at this sort of thing” or “ I am no good at Maths, Music, Art, English, Dancing…so why should I bother trying ?”
And if we think about sex, which we should never do, what man has never experienced ‘performance anxiety’ (PA) in fact even thinking about PA is a guaranteed way to destroy confidence and achieve the poor performance you most fear.
Confidence and self belief are king……last September nobody believed that an eighteen year old qualifier from the UK could win the US Open Tennis Championship, well, almost nobody…..well done Emma Raducanu! and the brave losers? some were graceful about it, most….not so much.
To quote Henry Ford,
“If you think you can or you think you can’t…….. you’re right!”
Some have certainly mastered the art of losing gracefully but I would argue that it is an art that has been painfully learned, that one has chosen to acquire, it is civilised and polite and possibly something to aspire to……
Sadly, I fear I am too old to learn it and will therefore have to remain a “good winner.”
Tim Fox
Educational Consultant
Primary School Principal and SEN Specialist
Tim has worked as a Special Ed teacher for over 40 years in eleven countries on three continents. Along the way he has been a School Counsellor a Secondary Deputy Head and a Primary Principal. He now consults on educational matters and in his spare time he counsels teenagers and teaches English IGCSE for the RAF base in Akrotiri.
