The paradox of failing to win: lessons from the FIFA World Cup.
I started writing this piece several hours before the final match between France and Croatia. I’m sure by now, everyone knows how that went. At the end, I managed to find some correlation between the outcome and the narrative I was trying to share.
Consider these two statements: “I failed” and “I lost”. Both sound pretty similar in this context but pushed slightly further, there are variations bordering on implication as follows: “I failed (therefore I’ll try again)” or “I lost (and there’s no longer hope)”.
It sucks to lose but I feel failure should be embraced as a welcome concept. I was distraught when at different points this year, I missed out on 2 investment opportunities.
I did not feel too bad about the first one to be honest, as the offer was unrealistic for our growth plans, but I still don’t know how to feel about the second. I say so because even though I was made a generous offer at the end, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted so it ranks as failure in my books despite learning a few more crucial life lessons along the way.
This ‘failure’, at the last minute hurt considerably, especially when you factor the amount of work and resources that went into it and the fact that it had taken approximately 3 years of careful ‘culturing’ to even get the opportunity.
In fact I had tried to engineer the same conversation 28 months prior but met a brick wall at the time so I guess it qualifies as progress when this time around, under similar circumstances, we proceeded into several rounds of reviews, negotiations, projections. You see my point about not knowing how to feel?
During the postmortem and after a few days ruing what might have been, I eventually came to terms with ‘my failure’, and realized that I simply needed to dust myself up, restrategize and have another go at a more auspicious time.
Lessons at the end: The fact that you think you have everything doesn’t mean you’re ready and losing is not thesame thing as failure. The latter gives you latitude and sharpens your focus, the former is a death sentence of disastrous proportions. It imprisons you and impedes your growth and vision — you’re alive but not actually living. Finally, no one remembers how many times you tried when you eventually succeed.
As for France, I expect that a lot of people must have already forgotten the failure (that ominous word again!) they experienced a couple of years ago at the European Championship in defeat to Portugal. All that is history now as they’ve managed to go one better and are deservedly world champions.
FYI, the underdog in me was rooting for a Croatia win but then, c’est la vie. Viva France. Allez Les Bleus!
