The awards were all sitting in front of me. A large screen flashed accolades, written by readers of the newspaper and submitted anonymously, praising the work of the columnists sitting in the room with me. We all watched anxiously for comments about our work.
I’m not gonna lie; I counted the number of times my name appeared on the screen, even taking photos of each comment with my phone.
To say I’m competitive is an understatement. I’ve always strived to be the best at everything I do. Whether I succeed or not is beside the point; I have an inherent desire to do my best.
Who am I kidding? It’s all about winning! I want an award and all the recognition that comes with it, including bragging rights and the photo for social media.
But today I was not a winner.
Thank goodness I learned a hard lesson when I was younger: not everyone gets a trophy just for participating.
When I was a child, we learned the value of winning but more importantly we learned the value of losing, and losing with grace. It didn’t matter if it was softball or dance or debate or any number of competitive activities. There could only be one winner; possibly a second and third place. But that was it. We didn’t receive a trophy simply for participating, a practice common today.
We learned to accept defeat graciously, and we learned to separate the loss of the event from ourselves. Just because we did not receive an award for our hard work did not mean that we, personally, were losers. It simply meant that someone else had performed better than we did at that given moment.
I believe we became more resilient. If we wanted to succeed next time, we evaluated the winning entry or the winning team’s strategy. We took notes. We practiced more. We set a goal, developed a plan to achieve that goal, and went to work.
My biggest lesson in defeat and winning came in high school. A life-long dancer, when drill team tryouts came I thought it would be no problem to make the team. I practiced and had the routine down pat. Piece of cake, I thought.
What I didn’t count on was the strong desire of others to secure one of the limited spots on the team. They may not have had the same years in the dance studio as I did, but they made up for it in determination.
Defeat hit me hard. I was devastated.
After twenty-four hours of solid tears, I held my head up, walked past the smiling girls who made the team and met with the director to ask for constructive feedback for next years’ tryouts.
Once I understood my areas for improvement, I developed a plan to master those skills by the next years’ try-outs. I was determined to win.
Was it hard to sit on the sidelines for a year? Yes. Was it difficult to practice alone while waiting for my next chance at redemption? Absolutely.
What will happen to kids today when they grow out of the “everyone gets a trophy” phase and experience true defeat? Will they know how to separate the loss based on skills without thinking, “I’m a loser”? And will they have the determination to develop a plan to win next time?
My losing experience taught me no matter how good I am at something, there’s always going to be someone better. I learned how to develop a plan to get from point A to point B.
Second time out, I made the team. Got the award, the bragging rights and the photo.
As for today’s events, I’m proud of my fellow columnists who received recognition for their work. It’s an honor to work with such skilled writers.
And the graduation gift we all received was lovely; a leather writing journal to capture our thoughts, which I know I’ll put to good use.
But I still want to win.
Like Tami, I was terminated once (By my best friend, BTW – he is now on the board of the agency I lead, so I got him back – ha!), but you don’t have to be unemployed to learn something from this book. 
