Being A Good Loser and A Good Winner

Jealousy
I want to talk about different kinds of jealousy: envy, the evil eye, revenge, competition, and finally being a good loser and sharing success.

Jealousy harms the person who is jealous as well as the person feeling the jealousy. If it's a three person relationship, it can harm all three.

Let's take three examples, competing to get a parking place, winning a prize in a competition, getting a boyfriend or girlfriend.

1 EnvySome people are negative. They say: 'I never win,' 'why does it always happen to me,' 'I never have any luck.'

Some are materialist, collectors. They never have enough.
Like kleptomaniacs, they take things they don't need. Sometimes to give them away (like the

Oriental business man who provides girls for visiting customers). Or to notch conquests up. To boast about having a harem bigger than any rival.

This person might be a womaniser, see it have to have it.

He might not be interested in a woman until he sees another person after her. Then the woman's value increases. She is a challenge.

I was interested in a boy at college. He took no notice of me. Then at the Christmas party he moved in swiftly.

Much later I discovered that another boy had unwisely said that he was interested in me. My boyfriend-to-be instantly decided to get in first.

2 The Evil Eye
This could be spite or competitiveness. The evil eye says you can't have it if I haven't got one.

3 Revenge & Spite
The jealous person says: If I can't have it or them, nobody will. I was horrified at a Country Music festival when free music discs were given out and two people grabbed the same disc.

When person B refused to let go, person A twisted the disc and broke it.
Everybody had dozens of free discs. Why couldn't they have reached an amicable agreement? One could have said, I really have lots but I especially like this one. I've got two of this one. If you let me keep this, I'll gladly give you one of my duplicates. Which would you prefer?

4 Competition
This happens at the Olympics and all those TV programmes designed so that somebody has to lose each time. The programme builds up the suspense. The winner is jubilant. The loser is devastated. To me this spoils the pleasure for the winner.

I always feel much better when the loser says, Of course I want to win and I think I deserver to but the competitors are also excellent. If they win, I'm delighted for them and I'm thrilled I got so far and had a chance to take part.

5 Being A Good Loser In A Competition
In Toastmasters (speakers) if there are five competitors, two are placed first and second. It is thought too embarrassing to have three winners and one loser who came last. In primary schools in the UK some sports competitions won't have winners because the losers feel bad.

I do think everybody should get a prize. In toastmasters all the competitors are given a Certificate of Participation.

But some kids are such bad losers, so upset, that they refuse to compete again after the distress of losing once. They haven't been properly coached to feel good about participating.

The organizers haven't remembered to praise the losers for their efforts. Without losers, there can be no winners, in a race, except by default.

Congratulations
The loser(s) should congratulate the winner(s). The winner(s) should commiserate with the winners, or say how well they all did.

Consolation Prizes
I like consolation prizes. At bridge games we used to have a consolation prize for the people who came last. Otherwise they might have felt too embarrassed or disappointed to return.

At birthday parties party bags are given so the visitors are not envious of the birthday child who gets dozens of presents when everybody else has none. Everybody gets a present.

6 Sharing Success With Strangers
The vast majority of writers have unpublished novels and screenplays that have not yet made it and poems which never get published. Whenever a famous author comes to sign books at a writers' conference you see people in the audience with mixed feelings.

The speaker has to tell a rags to riches story, to show that it was not easy. To explain how despite success, there have been down moments. Otherwise the audience turns resentful about the boastful author who has the success which everybody else in the audience wanted and has not yet achieved.

The most popular speakers take the attitude, 'If I can do it (and I'm no better than you) anybody can. You can do it. I'll share my tips with you. And I'll help you.' This wins goodwill.

7 Sharing Success With Friend & Family
So often we see marriages of successful actors and actresses break up when one becomes more successful than the other.

They say, 'Behind every successful man is a helping woman.' (There must be several variations on this. Do you know any?)

In any successful businesses all the family is in the same business, working together. Husband and wife. All the brothers. Father and son. So and so and daughter(s).

8 Cautionary Tale - The BrontesThe saddest story I know about writers and jealousy is that when Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre became a sensational success, her brother Branwell, a would-be painter who had never made it, could not be told about his sister's success. The family felt that her success would make him feel more of a failure.

I think that's dreadful. That she could not share her success. That he would have not been glad for her. That he would have felt so downhearted at his own failure. That such a talented family, so good with words, could not have found a way to make him feel that Charlotte's success had brought fame to the entire family, a joy which they could all share.

After a tennis match the opponents shake hands. It's no fun winning table tennis against somebody who can't play at all. It's no fun if the are so sour about losing that you wish you had not played.

It's one of the most important things to learn is that you are competing against yourself, and that just by participating you have made a step forward.

Writers often send off an article or novels and are devastated by the first of fifth rejection.
But it may be a numbers game, like job-hunting. (And some people think that finding your lover or soulmate is the same. But this also depends on how fussy you are.)

One way to look positively at things is to say: 'You have to be in it to win it.'

Another saying is 'You can't win them all.'

Sales training teaches you that if you get a two per cent rate of buying, and you can make a living, for example as a recruiter, on two job placements a month. That means loads of phone calls going nowhere. But you just have to tick them off and think that each one is a step nearer the 1000th call. By the time you reach a thousand, not only have you got immune to the distress of rejection, you have perfected your approach so as not to repel but to positively attract the buyer.

Has this anything to do with social life? Of course it has. You must be a good loser in love. You must never give up hope. If you are a good sport, you will get invited to the next party and competition. You could get lots of little prizes and one day one big one.

In everything I do, for example, writing a book, a blog, or anything else, I've had one little prize just by seeing my work in print. And I hope one day to win the big prize.