How To Win At Losing

How To Win at Losing: Recovering What’s Essential When It All Breaks Apart with Josh Reeves. The failure of losing is missing out on what it teaches you along the way. When we stop seeing life as a game of winning or losing but as an opportunity to learn what is most essential, we see life clearly and live it fully. This is a talk given live at Mile Hi Church.

Transcript

Our message this morning is how to win at losing,

Recovering what's essential when it all breaks apart.

And I think it's a cultural thing we folks here in America sometimes do,

Is sometimes when it comes to our memories,

We're not apt to just remember the quality of our experiences,

The quality of our relationships,

The quality of our lives.

We're sometimes more apt to just focus on our successes and our failures,

Our big wins and our screw-ups.

Anyone resonate with that?

I'd like to say that the former is true for me,

But it's too often been the latter.

And this really came to a head for me when I got my son involved in Little League Baseball.

I had played when I was a kid and I was just so excited to get him engaged and to put on a glove once again and to hear that ball crack off the bat and to smell the grass and to sit in the stands with the curmudgeonly parents.

You know,

I would sit there and I'd actually secretly daydream that the coach would come out and ask me to play.

You know,

I could really show him now.

And the truth was is I enjoyed it probably more than my son did.

And I'll always remember my wife got a call that Gavin had been injured during practice.

The pitcher,

The coach,

Was throwing batting practice and hit him in the foot.

And so he had to go to the emergency room.

And so I head right over and wait a little while and Gavin comes out,

Big crutches,

Big cast on his foot and the biggest smile I had ever seen him have.

And I knew in that moment his playing days were complete.

His athletic career was over.

And it's not that I didn't remember playing baseball.

It's just that all I remembered about it was my big wins and my big mistakes.

You know,

I remember getting that base hit to right field that won the game.

I remember being playing third base and the bases were loaded with two outs and I dove and caught a ball in foul territory and won the game for my team.

I remember facing the best pitcher in a tournament and getting the only hit in the game.

I bounced it right over the first baseman's head and I was so excited I ran to second base and was thrown out by a mile.

I remember all those balls I ran up on when I should have backed up on.

That's what I remembered but putting that glove on again,

Watching the fun being had,

I became sad because there were things that I wanted to remember that I couldn't.

I wanted to remember the faces of my coaches.

I wanted to remember the names of some of those kids that I played with.

I wanted to remember what I liked to have for snack afterwards.

What was it like to ride my bike to practice or ride my bike home?

I wanted to remember all these things and I couldn't because I had so focused on the wins and the losses.

Perhaps that's been true at times in your life,

Maybe not to do with sports,

But we've lost perhaps that connecting link of what really matters in life by just focusing on our wins and losses.

I think that question,

What do you have to lose,

Is a good question.

Sometimes it's serious.

I could lose my life.

I could lose my relationship.

I could lose my career.

Life says,

Josh,

That thing you're thinking of doing,

Don't do that.

But sometimes the answer to that question is kind of ridiculous.

I think it's time that I try a new creative hobby,

A new creative art project.

What do I have to lose?

Well,

The image of myself as a perfect person,

That's not much.

What do I have to lose?

I want to leave the career I am and to start a new business.

What do I have to lose?

Well,

I might fail.

I might lose at it.

Well,

So what?

Throw a big party and say,

I couldn't have failed without you.

I feel it's time to have a courageous conversation in my relationships.

Something's not working.

What do I have to lose?

Well,

I might impede on someone's idea of who they think I'm supposed to be,

How they're unwilling to change and let me grow.

What do you have to lose?

I love something that Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys once said.

He said,

Beware the lollipop of mediocrity.

Lick it once and you'll suck forever.

And that's what happens sometimes.

See,

We want to understand that winning and losing go together to tell the story of our success.

They're not opposites.

They're like yin and yang.

When we can embrace both,

They help us excel to where it is that we want to be.

See,

The opposite of winning isn't losing.

It's not playing.

The opposite of losing isn't winning.

It's playing it safe.

And too many of us too often,

We're so afraid of expressing ourselves at our worst that we inhibit the best of ourselves.

We're so afraid of screwing up that we hold back that creative magnificence within us.

See,

Our spirits are precious,

No doubt about it,

But they're not fragile.

Your spirit is not so fragile that you have to hide it away and protect it.

In fact,

It's the most powerful thing that there is,

And when you apply it with consciousness,

With conviction,

With love,

It is the creative impetus for bringing forth the best in your life,

The best in your experience.

What do you have to lose but to apply the best of yourself in your wins and in your losses,

In your screw-ups and in your achievements,

All leading to a whole experience of you.

And so I invite you this morning as we enter into this message today not to focus on the places in your life where you're succeeding right now or the places where it may appear that you're failing or falling short.

I invite you to focus on those places where you're playing it safe,

Where you're withholding your courage,

Where you're withholding that best of who you are,

And to understand it's okay to win and it's okay to lose,

But don't live your life outside of it looking in.

Get in there.

And I want to share with you today three gifts that I've received from losing,

Three valuable gifts that I'm so grateful for.

And the first is humility.

If you were here last week,

I shared a little bit about that,

How screwing up and making mistakes has given me that quality of humility that has ultimately become a vehicle to the genuine for me.

A little bit of humility goes a long way for helping us to recover what's most essential about ourselves so we can bring it back to our lives.

I love the story of Jim Clyburn,

A Congressperson from the great state of South Carolina,

And he's a bit of an institution today.

He's been a Congressperson for 30 years.

But what a lot of people don't know about Clyburn is that he ran for Congress for over 20 years before he got elected.

And he shared in 1970 when he first ran,

The news reported that it sounded like he was up 500 votes.

And he went into the restroom pretty happy,

And his wife had left him a little note there.

It said,

When you win,

Brag gently.

When you lose,

Weep softly.

Isn't that a great role for humility?

And it turned out that those 500 votes were really for the other candidate,

And he didn't win.

So he ran again,

And he lost,

And he ran again,

And he lost.

And a friend said to him,

I guess it's like baseball,

Jim.

Three strikes and you're out.

And Jim replied,

This isn't baseball.

This is life.

And he kept working at it until in 1992 he was finally elected to Congress.

And I love something that he shared with his granddaughter.

He said,

There was just something that kept telling me,

You can't throw in the towel.

You've got to stick this out.

You know,

Our state seal in South Carolina,

We have a Latin phrase that says,

While I breathe,

I hope.

And I've always felt that wherever there's life,

There's hope.

I never gave up.

I kept running for office until I got it right.

While I breathe,

There's hope.

Our bodies give us the gift of breath.

Our spiritual birth gives us the gift of hope.

It's those divine seeds planted in each of us that gives us the opportunity that as long as we have this gift of life,

We can continue to know those possibilities that we may not see around us or within us that we're called to bring forth.

You know,

My great spiritual teacher,

Jiminy Cricket,

I think he had it right.

When your heart is in your dream,

No request is too extreme.

I'll stop there.

And I believe that's absolutely true,

But that doesn't mean there's not going to be humbling moments along the way.

The hope is always there,

But the failures,

The mistakes,

The screw-ups,

The little moments of loss,

They'll be there too.

And that's a good thing because we can respond to them and remember that breath,

That hope,

That possibility that keeps us going.

We only truly lose when we take that loss as a negation,

As an affirmation that our hope is dead or wrong.

Stay with it.

Learn from those mistakes.

Learn from those losses,

And you'll be on your way to a victory of wholeness.

The second gift of losing is the gift of virtue.

Loss has taught me how important my virtues are and has taught me that as long as I hold strong to those virtues,

I can't,

In the whole panoramic view of things,

Ever lose.

Yet our virtues can sometimes be easy to sacrifice.

Think about what are three core virtues for you that you try to live every day?

For me,

Peace of mind,

Integrity,

Compassion.

I try to live those every day,

But sometimes it's so easy to sacrifice those.

Just one rude comment,

Gone.

Too much traffic,

Gone.

A moment of loss of steam or anxiety about a future event,

Gone.

That's the real loss,

Is when we give up our virtues and fall into who we really aren't.

For those virtues,

When we can embody them,

Even in a loss,

Can help us reach a greater state of victory,

A greater state of being.

I remember I had just been a minister for a couple of years,

And I got to go to one of our Centers for Spiritual Living conventions in Orlando,

Florida.

It was my favorite thing I ever experienced at one of these.

There was a panel of great ministers there.

One of them is right here.

His name is Dr.

Raz Smith.

Interesting that you went to the conventions that were near a Disney theme park.

I just want to point that out.

Dr.

Raz has incredible things to say.

There was something that was also said by a minister named David Bruner,

Who is the senior minister in San Jose,

That really gave me a great principle for ministry and for life.

He said,

Things can go wrong,

But I can't go wrong.

Things can go wrong,

But I can't go wrong.

Now,

That can be misinterpreted.

We can take that as,

I have to be perfect.

I have to be on all the time.

That's not what he meant.

What he meant was,

Things will go wrong.

Mistakes will happen,

But keep your composure.

Hold to your virtues.

This was so important to me early in ministry when the music stunk on a Sunday,

When the usher was yelling at the kids to be quiet and it was interrupting the talk,

When I was screwing up my messages.

That didn't matter.

What mattered was,

Did I keep my composure?

Did I keep that peace of mind?

Did I hold to that compassion?

Did I keep an integrity?

Because in your church,

In your career,

In your family,

Whatever it is,

And I don't mean to affirm negative things,

Because I don't think they're negative,

Mistakes and screw-ups will happen.

Things will go wrong,

But you don't have to.

And your ability to carry and be those virtues can lead to greater and greater success in your life.

Now,

I've learned when I lose at a game or didn't get that promotion or my idea wasn't moved forward or I lost an argument with my wife,

Whatever it may be,

I've learned there are three ways that I can respond.

And I believe there's three ways that we can all respond.

The first thing when you lose,

And just a moment,

Again,

Because I'm not affirming the negative for you,

I'm going to guess that something will happen this week that will cause you to feel like you made a mistake or that you lost in some way.

The first way we can respond is to withdraw.

I'm just going to put myself in a corner,

Fetal position,

And lick my wounds.

I'm going to stop playing the game.

Now,

This isn't the worst thing in the world when it comes to something like a game,

But it can be very damaging when it comes to things that we care about.

In my relationship with my wife,

When it comes to parenting our kids,

She's the boss.

And sometimes there are things that I want,

And she's right 90% of the time,

But I'm often wrong.

And it goes on another way,

And sometimes my ego is a little bruised by that.

So what do I do?

I withdraw.

I stand away and I start looking in at my family and stop being as a good a parent or as good a husband as I can be.

That's not the kind of withdrawal we want to do.

Someone else gets the promotion,

Don't just stop going to work.

It's easy to withdraw,

But again,

That causes us to hold back those virtues.

The second way we can respond is even worse than the first.

It's too obstruct.

It's too obstruct.

When someone runs for office that I wanted and they don't win and someone else gets in there,

I start talking bad about her.

I start rooting for her to fail.

Sometimes even in family,

My wife wins the argument on where we go to dinner,

And I consciously or unconsciously make sure we all have a bad time,

Because it's not what I wanted to do.

And so it sounds like,

Oh,

I would never obstruct,

But we do in our own way at times.

And it's so important to realize that when we're obstructing,

We're actually sacrificing our virtues.

This is the kind of loss where we are putting our worst self forward,

Because we've sacrificed those values and virtues that make us who we are.

The third option,

Which is the hardest to do in my experience,

Yet is the most courageous,

Is to get back in the game and work for the highest good.

Get back in the game and work for the highest good.

Someone else got that promotion,

Call them up and say,

Congratulations,

Anything I can do to support you,

I'm right here.

Lose an argument with your spouse or your partner,

Come back and say,

I'm sorry.

How can we make this better?

How can we move forward?

Lose a game,

Lose a goal,

Lose yourself for a moment,

Get back,

Love yourself,

Remember your truth,

Remember your hope,

Remember your dream,

Remember your way of operating in the world from that place of virtue.

And it's there that the true legends are defined.

It's there that the true victory happens in our lives because we never gave up the truest part of our character.

I've learned for me that playing the game of life isn't about trying to win the game of life.

It's about trying to win each day with my virtues.

Can I just do my best to win each day?

And so I can ask myself,

Did you have peace of mind today?

Were you in integrity?

Were you compassionate?

Some days I win,

Some days I lose.

When I'm going to bed at night,

It's rarely an operational decision that keeps me up.

It's that moment where I knew I could have been a little kinder.

It's that moment where I know that I could have talked less and listened more.

You know,

I could have been a little bit more compassionate in that situation.

But it's then that I have to apply that to myself.

It's then that we have to apply our virtues to our own self-care and get back,

Get back to that day and win that day once again.

The third gift of losing that I want to share today has to do with emphasis.

The gift of emphasis.

My wins have helped,

But it's really sometimes my failures that have helped me see my life from that panoramic view to see how my wins and my losses have actually added up to make my life the wholeness that it is,

The completeness that it is,

The path of success that it is and I want it to continue to be.

But sometimes we get so focused on the loss and letting it stop us from moving forward that we inhibit ourselves.

We lick that lollipop of mediocrity and we get stuck there.

I know it's common to say that you can't change the past.

And if you're saying by that that I can't time travel back in time and change the way events happened,

I totally agree with you.

But for me,

The past isn't just history.

I believe that we can change our past.

The past is something intimate to each one of us.

It's something personal to each one of us that we experience and tell ourselves and re-experience in our own way over and over again.

I may not be able to change what happened in my past,

But I can change who I am in relationship with my past.

I can remember a moment where I felt like a loser or I felt broken or I felt victimized.

Or where I felt that I didn't put my best self forward.

And I can honor that sense of brokenness.

I can honor that sense of loss from who I was then.

But that's not the question.

James Hillman said,

If something from the past is hurting you,

It's the thought that's hurting you now.

The question is,

Who am I now in relationship with my past?

Can I hold myself then and now in a place of wholeness,

A place of forgiveness,

A place of understanding?

Can I take that crappy thing that happened to me and remember how I used it to help myself,

To be of service to other people?

It doesn't mean I'm trying to make something that's bad good.

It just means that I even took a bad thing and made myself better because of it.

I live from that greater good.

So by changing our relationship with our past,

We can change our experience of the past,

Which sounds like changing the past in its own way to me.

The second thing that we can do is we can begin to change our emphasis.

We can let go of just emphasizing those wins and losses,

Those screw-ups and achievements,

And be willing to emphasize and remember that spiritual thread that's always been in our lives,

Our spiritual narrative,

And remember how it's guided us along the way.

That quality of life,

That quality of relationships and connections,

That quality of self-understanding,

How blessed I've been to have the experiences I've had,

To know the people that I've known,

To learn the lessons that I've learned.

When I was talking about playing baseball with my son and not being able to remember those things,

The truth was that eventually,

After playing and playing and letting go of some of those wins and losses,

It was amazing that it kind of came back.

All of a sudden,

I could see that coach's face.

All of a sudden,

I did remember that kid's name.

All of a sudden,

I did remember how much I loved corn nuts after the game.

I remembered what my bike looked like.

I remember how it felt to have my dad hit me fly balls at the school across the street.

It came back.

Don't let the best of your life and yourself be locked away because you've lost that ability to emphasize what matters most in your life.

What I know is that anything that we may think is lost in time can be brought back to life in our consciousness and can give us the inspiration that we need to come back to life from feeling dead because of a loss,

From feeling broken because of a mistake.

That's,

To me,

What forgiveness is.

It's coming back to life,

Coming back to love,

Coming back to live again.

All we have to be willing to do is to stop holding ourselves to that old story of the past and to allow that clearer picture,

Those lessons,

Those messengers,

That support along the way to come back to life.

I love how the author Meredith Jordan put it.

She said,

Whatever you have forgotten,

You can remember.

Whatever you have buried,

You can unearth.

If you are willing to look deep into your own nature,

If you are willing to peel away the layers of not-self you have adopted and making your way through the tribulations of life,

You will find that your true self is not as far removed as you think.

Whether you're feeling absolutely at one with your spirit,

With your virtues,

With your humility,

With your success today,

Or it feels like something totally other than you,

We know that no matter what,

Our spirits stay strong.

There are always layers of wisdom available.

And if we are willing to live not just from that light,

But that holy truth within us that knows that winning and losing is a part of life,

But when we bring our whole self to the party,

Our whole self to the game,

That's when the magic and the true nature of our spirit comes forward.

So let's have a prayer together if you so choose to join me.

And just from a deep place of gratitude for the many fruits of life,

I am so thankful for that little thing called perspective that allows me to move past just seeing my life in pieces,

But that can begin to embrace and see it as a complete whole.

It doesn't mean that I'm thankful for bad times or bad moments,

But what it means is I recognize there's that golden thread of truth,

Our spiritual biographies that move through our lives,

That is always ready to be resumed when we let go of the temporary,

When we let go of the fallacies of mind,

And we get in touch with that deep truth in our hearts,

Calling us to live from our potential,

Calling us to live from that hope as long as we breathe,

Calling us to live from that highest aspect of ourselves.

We refute any inclination to hide it away.

And I know that as we choose to live from this divine light,

This sacred fire,

That it gives birth to greater healing,

Grace,

Well-being,

Inspiration,

And creativity in our lives.

It sets an example for those whom we love who may be struggling to rediscover their own spiritual narrative,

Their own spiritual truth,

To live it with greater clarity that I know leads to greater joy and a greater experience of the essential wholeness of who each one of us is.

So from a place of gratitude,

May we step in to whatever is before us this week,

Knowing certainly some absurdities may take place,

Some babbling may occur.

But as we hold true to that true nature of who we are,

I know that that divine spirit continues to guide and uplift us to greater and greater ways of living and being.

And so it is.

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