WIN OR LEARN – OR DON’T DO EITHER

Every few years, an expression seems to catch on and be applied to everything to which it can be remotely applied. “Let go of your ego,” and “Just do it,” have had their days in the sun, and “It is what it is,” has had a pretty good run. More recently, however, I’ve been hearing “You win or you learn,” applied to all sorts of life lessons in addition to sports where I believe it first surfaced.

It is indeed a great concept – if you recognize that life is a series of challenges rather than a situation where falling short of your goal means that the goal is unreachable forever. Winning and losing aren’t the only possible outcomes when you make an effort to achieve a goal. You can also quit.

I think this is a particularly important concept for my fellow older adults to recognize. Many of us have made the mistake of not following through and learning from a defeat – whether it be on the field or in our job performance or our investment strategy or our love life. Nobody is successful all the time, but if you are a learner, you are not a quitter or a loser.

The concept of lifelong learning doesn’t mean that you are only taking in information and easily processing it.

Learning wasn’t always easy in school, and it’s not always easy when we’re out of school. Learning implies that we will try things, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes – even if we apply some of those lessons years later. For example, I learned early in my professional life that I wanted to spend my time providing direct service to people rather than primarily using technology and doing research.

Part of the reason was that I wasn’t as good at tech, but I never felt that I was a loser in that area and incapable of learning it. Now that I’ve revisited this area later in my life and have focused on incorporating it into my skill set, I am able to use computers, AI, and research on a daily basis than I could do if I was only doing one-to-one counseling or coaching.

Although I don’t consider myself a winner in the tech field, I learn from my struggles on a daily basis.

Are there areas where you’ve allowed a lack of success to define you as a loser in that area rather than a learner? You only become a loser if you quit rather than learn from negative experiences. And now, we have the expression, “You win or you learn,” as a constant reminder of how to cope when we don’t win.