Every Champion Was Once Defeated: How to Rise Again

The following post is from EPIC: 101 Short Stories, Essays, and Insights to Improve Communication Skills

I’m a big fan of the fight game.

I don’t just watch how fighters take a win.

A bigger learning point is how they take a loss.

A while back, I began following this upcoming female fighter.

Let me call her Ashley for the rest of the email.

Ashley made a splash by going viral for a knockout punch last year.

That’s how I became introduced to her.

Decided to follow her on Instagram to see her progress.

As the coming weeks went by, she began to have a polarized audience.

Plenty of people followed her for the fighting.

However, she seemed like she wanted to be an Instagram model as well.

That’s when she received criticism for not focusing fully on her craft.

A part of her also wanted to explore boxing too!

A mixed martial artist who wanted to be an Instagram model and a boxer.

Hm…

Attention seems to be split.

The fight game doesn’t lie.

Either you win or you lose.

I’m not too active on Instagram.

Due to my inactivity, I lost touch with this fighter’s updates for a couple of months.

However, a couple of weeks ago, I heard she was going to be fighting.

Interesting…

What was going to happen??

I ended up getting pretty busy in her fight weekend, so didn’t stay updated.

After the weekend was done, I saw a post that showed her knocking out her opponent.

I guess she won!

Good for her.

She had a long description on her post which I did not feel like reading.

So, I just kept on scrolling.

As some time went by, I saw another page report that Ashley had lost the fight.

Wait, what??

I just saw that she won.

I went back to her page and looked at the picture again.

Yes, she was knocking out her opponent.

Clearly, she won.

At this point, I was confused.

So I decided I was going to read this long ass paragraph that she wrote.

I read it…

And was a tad bit disappointed.

Ashley had lost.

I wasn’t disappointed by her losing.

It was more so regarding the description.

The way the post was framed, it seemed like her opponent had gotten lucky.

Ashley framed herself as having been in the beginning of her career, so that’s why this setback happened to her.

Was she in the beginning of her career?

Yes.

Was her opponent also in the beginning of her career?

Yes.

Was credit given to the opponent for winning?

Not quite.

This was a case of not taking a Loss with grace.

Losses happen to the best of us.

Especially in a sport like fighting.

Where your ego can get heavily invested in the process.

I hated playing video games for that reason.

It’s because I suck at that field. Any game. If it’s multiplayer, I normally take the L.

This has me getting pissed off.

Especially at the person who beat me.

The last thing I want to do is shake their hand.

This was my past self.

I came to realize that losses happen in all facets of life.

Ego hits come in all shapes and sizes.

Let’s envision a guy named Nestor who has the safest job in the world.

He puts the cotton stuffing in the medicine containers.

Day in and day out.

Seems like a fairly safe job.

Well, when it’s too safe, there’s a guarantee an ego hit will happen in another form.

That’s just how nature is programmed.

‘For all of us?’

Yes, for all of us.

Maybe Nestor has an annoying boss.

This is one of those mean bosses that you see on TV shows.

Except in Nestor’s situation, it’s real life.

With social media, it’s easy to run away from a Loss.

The way that Ashely created the post, it truly did seem like she won.

In her mind, I think she even convinced herself she won. She probably framed it like she was taken advantage of.

Information age is equivalent to the Instant Gratification age.

People want quick wins.

But they don’t want to take slow losses.

Learn to take a loss like a champion by learning that you had the loss in the first place.

It’s a game of acceptance being the king.

Who knows how Ashley’s next fight will go.

Maybe she comes back with more hunger.

What I did notice is that a split attention does not produce greatness.

Especially in the beginning portions of a journey.

It’s a game of getting that attention and harnessing it like a sun behind a magnifying glass.

Then creating the narrative, ‘it’s either greatness or bust.’

No balancing acts for a while.

Few take this path.

But those who do… definitely learned how to take a loss like a champion.

Make no mistake about that.

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