I thought I'd share some interesting perspective from a high school coach who received a letter of encouragement from Marv Levy (ex-Bills head coach who lost four consecutive Super Bowls).
Link:
Dealing with the crushing defeat - Bob Seggerson - varsity.limaohio.com
Levy’s message to me was we make too much out of winning and losing and the real reward was in the journey not the destination. Coach Levy was a scholar. He earned a masters degree in English Literature from Harvard before entering the coaching profession.
Coach Levy quoted from a Rudyard Kipling poem, “triumph and disaster are both imposters.”
That line, from the poem “If,” hit home for me. It reminded me we don’t live life riding on the crest of success, or wallowing in the misery that can accompany defeat. We live life in the middle, the every day. It does not mean we shouldn’t strive for the very best in everything we attempt, but that we shouldn’t become over-inflated when we reach the top, or diminished by the losses that are inevitable. An athlete or coach caught on the extremes is bound for disappointment. Life can change in an instant.
By the way, for a man who was not an athlete, Kipling’s poem “If,” published in 1896, comes as close to describing the athletic experience as anything I have read. I recommend it for any young athlete or coach. In fact, I’ll make it an assignment for you young jocks, male and female, although you girls will have to change the gender in the poem. Google the poem, read it, copy it, and then place it where you will see it often. The older you get, the more it will mean to you.
Here is the poem:
IF ...
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
