Are we becoming Afraid to Lose?

Everyone gets a Prize

This is the biggest issue with schools and sports these days is that everyone gets a prize.

The participation medal has become the norm in schools and in sporting events and in competition.

Is this a good thing?

There is a lot to be said for the stimulation that getting an award gives to the brain.

But have we made our children weaker and unable to handle failure.

Learning to lose and learning to Win

We need to learn as much about how to lose as we do learning how to win.

If we don’t win but we are given an award anyway it’s not teaching us the importance of losing and the motivation to then work towards future success.

I know that I have had more losses in competition than wins but the losses were the driving force to make me better so that eventually I did win.

Was I upset when I lost?

Of course I was upset. But the need to succeed forced me to very quickly assess the loss and then take steps to improve.

Learning to lose at a young age and then learning how to win is important. Life was not meant to be easy. If your brought up thinking that it is easy. You won’t learn to overcome and be better.

Competition is healthy

Competition is healthy. It makes us better. But losing is healthy if it makes us more competitive and hungry to improve and be better.

Don’t kid yourself and say that you won’t enjoy winning. But also don’t kid yourself and say that winning when you knew that you could have been better wasn’t a shallow victory.

That’s why competition breeds success. If you are always striving to be better than yesterday knowing how good your competition is then you will push harder to be better.

If you lose at your best. It’s a far better feeling to lose knowing you gave everything that you had.

It’s even better to go back to training and work on being better than your best.

Life is your toughest competition.

You won’t get a participation medal when you go for a job interview and not get the job.

You won’t get a participation medal when you get knocked back on a home loan.

You won’t get a participation medal when you can’t pay your bills.

You won’t get a participation medal when you fail your driving test.

Life is about learning to lose and learning to win. That’s not going to happen when we don’t learn how to lose.

Do we protect our children from failure or teach them to overcome failure.

Are participation medals wrong?