By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
~Maya Angelou
The dictionary definition of defeat is very interesting. The first definition is, “having been beaten in a battle or other contest.” The second one is the more interesting one. “Demoralized and overcome by adversity.”
The second definition speaks of the impact of the loss and how it affects you as a person. It is an emotional response. It is how you interpret the events, rather than the events themselves.
But when you look at most of the things for which you may feel defeated, they shouldn’t leave you demoralized . . . Yet they do.
They shouldn’t leave you, “overcome by adversity” but they have.
Permitting yourself the luxury of feeling defeated reflects something about you and your unwillingness to persevere.
Now, if your alleged defeat was caused by a blind spot that someone took advantage of, you may be feeling ashamed of having made a mistake. That’s different than feeling defeated.
If you felt defeated because he made a mistake, you can learn something from the moment and not make the same mistake (or similar ones) in the future. After all, as long as they are not fatal, you can recover from mistakes.
I just want to point out that in very few instances have you been beaten in a battle or another contest that has any consequence. You are demoralized and you can bounce back from that.
How long it takes to do so reflects upon human resilience.
How long you choose to wallow in the feeling of being overcome by adversity is your choice.
Boxers get punched in the mouth and it hurts but they have been trained to rebound from most of those punches in the mouth, either ignore them or learn from them, to fight and persevere.
You can, too.
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2020, 2022
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