It’s been less than a week since nearly half the country tuned in to watch Game 7 of the World Series, which concluded in a heartbreaking extra-inning loss for the Toronto Blue Jays.
While the loss still stings, experts say there is an opportunity to use that disappointment as a learning moment for our own future endeavours – whether at work or in our personal lives. No one is suggesting that losing is fun. But there are ways to turn defeat into enduring, personal change and growth. Here’s how.
According to resiliency expert Dr. Michael Ungar, we learn more from losing than winning. “Grief gives you the capacity moving forward to deal with future stress,” says Ungar, who is the founder and director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
He says he reframed the sadness of the Jays’ loss by remembering how the country came together during their World Series run, and the good times he shared with his family watching the games. “Reframing is a skill of resilience and protects us – it strengthens us after setbacks of any kind.”
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After a difficult loss, Ungar advises sitting with the comedown, then remembering the end result doesn’t equal the endeavour’s whole worth. If a business fails, a marriage winds down or your favourite team loses, it doesn’t mean the experience wasn’t a success.
“This opens the door to ‘conceptualization,’ a cognitive trick for appreciating what you have in the moment,” says Ungar, whose work with Fortune 500 companies puts the focus on enjoying the process as much as the final result. “Being present and appreciating what we have sustains us,” says Ungar. “Good things aren’t erased even if everything falls apart.”
Max Scherzer, the irascible Jays’ pitcher, is known to want get back at it the day after a loss. The worse the loss, the sooner he wants to return to the mound.
It’s a drive that is familiar to Lanni Marchant, the Olympic runner who set the Canadian women’s marathon record in 2013 – just two months after suffering what she calls the most humiliating race of her career, when she experienced cramping at the world track and field championships in Moscow and was forced her to walk part of the marathon course. After that, Marchant says she was determined to try again at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in October.
“I didn’t go into my next marathon thinking I’m going to prove everyone wrong, I went in thinking that I’m going to prove myself right,” she says.
“The worst thing that could’ve possibly happened to me happened, and I was still alive,” adds Marchant. “I’d humiliated myself – I felt like I might as well have run naked down Yonge Street – but it didn’t kill me, so I knew no matter what happened, the next race would be different. I could handle whatever would come.”
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Today, the 41-year-old, who competed in two events in the 2016 Olympics, is training for her next marathon and advises anyone who has experienced defeat to try again.
“I can’t promise your next attempt will be better or worse, but if you try, the next thing will at least be different,” says Marchant.
Julie Dwyer, a researcher and lecturer at the Behaviour Medicine Centre at Memorial University in St. John’s, says an unexpected loss can lead to growth. “Setbacks activate our adaptive system and allow us to build our grit and identity – rebuilding after a loss allows us to sharpen our focus.”
After losing – whether a baseball game or a business venture – you’re given a blank slate to restart, says Dwyer. A loss can be a gift because it gives you valuable information and the chance to choose what to do with that information and where to go next.
“Loss clarifies what matters because you’re forced to recalibrate before taking your next step,” says Dwyer.
She watched more baseball with her father last month than in the previous 20 years. Next season, they’re going to cheer on the Jays from day one.
“A loss in life means that you stretched, you cared, you tried – and renewal shows up in the gap between reality and expectations,” says Dwyer. “This is a good thing because we can transform failure into feedback we can use to make lasting, intentional change.”
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