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- Losing Is Ok, Losing Yourself Is Not
Work stress, internet trolls, and unrealistic ambitions relative to available time were getting the best of me the other week.
I was still smiling. I’m always smiling as some people have told me. There’s a trick to it though.
I have a “good” smile. A genuinely happy version. And I have a “not good” smile, which isn’t always “bad” so much as it is always “not the best.” It’s a furrowed brow, concerning/concerned version. Or so my wife tells me. She likes to point out which one is on my face at any point in time.
The smile doesn’t control me, but I don’t always control it. If it’s a subconscious reflection of my inner toilings, I’m trying to be better at noticing the ratio by which they each show up on my face.
Luckily, we were also on a re-watch of Friday Night Lights. If there is nothing more AND less important in the world than sports, let alone non-professional sports… I’ll come back to the first season of this show over and over again for the rest of my life. It’s beautiful. Somewhere around the end of the first season, this is the Coach Taylor advice my smiles needed to hear:
“Every man, at some point in his life is going to lose a battle. He is going to fight and he is going to lose. But what makes him a man, is that in the midst of that battle, he does not lose himself.”
My W’s get good smiles. But my L’s get not-good smiles. The more L’s I’m stacking - see the leadoff sentence again - the more the brow is furrowed alongside my otherwise pleasantly positive, crooked-tooth smile.
The losses are a part of it.
The losses are a part of it.
The losses are a part of it.
There are no wins without losses along the way.
There is no sustainable version of winning that isn’t fueled by lessons learned from losses.
Whatever sources the genuine smile, even if it’s an old, beloved TV show and workday come-down on the couch to rest before we get after it again, that’s the balance I need to control for.
Clear eyes about what’s really going on inside me.
Full hearts about what environments I want to orient myself towards.
Can’t lose, at least not in the permanent sense, if the focus is on getting back to where the genuine smiles show up. It’s not just a goal for myself, but the goal for my life, for my wife, for our lives, and for the company we keep.
There will be lots of losses along the way. And that’s OK. Smile the right smile about it.