This past week my kids participated in the annual Bruin mile fun run. This is an annual event put on by the high school cross-country team where we live. All of the elementary age kids are allowed to participate and are separated by age groups and gender. All 3 of my elementary age kids ran this year. The two in first grade ran in the 1st-4th grade group and the 5th grader ran with the 5th grade group.
The two first graders ran separately with their gender. My daughter finished the half mile in 4:10 and my son finished in 4:11. I was amazed how closely they finished from each other! The way it worked out, my daughter got 8th place and received a medal for her effort, but my son got 30th place and received a ribbon. The older brother ran a 7:24 and also placed 8th in his age group and received a medal. This left my first grade boy as the only one in the family that did not win a medal.
He was in tears. He could not figure out why he did not get a medal but instead got a “stupid ribbon”! We explained to him that he ran as good as he could but it was not good enough to get a medal. After a few minutes of patiently trying to explain this to him and console his crying, my patience ran out. In my mind I was thinking, “You lost, get over it!” Instead, the other two began to talk to him about it and my 5th grader even offered to give him the medal he had won. The 1st grader did not want that! He wanted his own medal! Eventually after what seemed like forever, he calmed down and focused his attention on something else.
This caused me to think about how this could be applied to life. Sometimes, despite my best effort, I don’t win. For most of us not winning happens more often than winning. My competitive side hates to admit this, but it is ok to not always win. (Wow, that hurt to write!) If my best efforts are not better than everyone else, that is ok. It was MY best effort. I realize I can’t be the best in everything or even any one thing.
Focus on what you do well and what you enjoy doing and become better at those things. Find a niche. Fill a need. You have God-given talents that He gave you to help make the world a better place. There is no one else exactly like you. There are ways only you can help out. There are people who can be touched only by the talents you have to share. Life is not about winning all the time. Don’t let a loss keep you down. Both losing and winning are only temporary. Along the path of life if you happen to lose….get over it…and try again!
“When you win, you don’t examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you’ve worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn’t particularly define you beyond those characteristics.
Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?
If you’re willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.” – Lance Armstrong
Crying about losing!
Clint Notes 