When You Lose, Don't Lose the Lesson

A man walked up to me in Calgary at the YMCA and casually said, “Hi Bob”.

I responded, “Hi”, but I didn’t have a clue who he was. I glanced back a couple of times to try and remember where I knew him from, but no luck. My memory is going on me, or so I thought.

I ran into the gentleman again at the sink and the way he was talking he knew so much about me! It was like, okay where do I know his person from?

I hit him with quite a few questions to figure out the connection. I asked him how his health was, and he said, Awesome since he lost over 80 pounds. He said, He couldn’t believe how much energy he has now. He couldn’t stop talking about how much his life changed. I finally broke down and said, “My apologies, what was your name again?” He said, “Scott.”

I barely recognized him from his old body. “Scott”, I asked, “What motivated you to lose all this weight?”

Scott paused for a few seconds, looked up at me and told me a story about his daughter. He explained why his daughter could not play with him because he got tired to fast and she would say, “I can’t play with my dad!”

“Bob”, he said, “That story shocked and saddened me and right then I knew I needed to make changes in my life, so I could play with my daughter.”

My Olympic wrestling coach had taught me a similar lesson years ago, after a loss.

“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.”

Scott was about to lose valuable time with his only child, and Scott knew what that meant and didn’t forget the lesson.

There is an old eastern philosophy that states, “There is no evolution without shock”.

Scott had his shock and now it was time to learn the lesson.

Most of us are bound to lose – at least occasionally. But ultimately, your determination to address and examine why you lost and to ‘learn the lesson’ from it can be a valuable catalyst for success.

In life, at some point we all lose something. When this happens make sure we do not lose the lesson, so it doesn’t happen twice.

Cheers,

Bob Molle (Coach Bob)
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
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