Lose to Win

-
Hello there Beauties!

While watching one of my favourite cartoons, I learnt a very valuable lesson. If you’re curious, I’m watching Yu Yu Hakusho, season 4, episode 12. In this episode, a father is trying to teach his son the lesson of accepting defeat when necessary because only a fool fights blindly on. Great lesson indeed: know when to quit. 

For me, the lesson was not knowing when to quit, but how to learn in my season of loss. I think we focus way too much on winning; we forget the value of defeat. If you take a breath to pause and observe, you’ll realize that you gain more by failure than you do by victory. 

Let’s break that down, shall we? (I love when my thought process materializes; it makes me so happy.) Okay, follow me. 

Here are the valuable lessons to be learnt from losing: 

1. Look up. Look forward. Look within. 
When you’re down and out, you have a better opportunity to anticipate what’s ahead. You get to look within yourself and fix things from the ground level. Imagine standing up and looking at the sky. Now imagine that same view on your knees. Now, imagine that same view flat on your back or stomach. The perspective sure changes, doesn’t it? 

2. Reset. Recharge. Re-evaluate. 
Now with new outlooks and a front row seat to all your mistakes, you can power up to go again. Nothing gives more insight and hindsight than loss, and more importantly, it gives great foresight. Questions like “How can I improve?” and “How can I fix my mistakes?” arise, and this provides so much motivation to simply do better. With renewed motivation, focus, and awareness, we are more determined to go even further than we went the last time. 

3. Once bitten, twice shy. 
You now have the blueprint. What will you do with it? The proverb, “Once bitten, twice shy,” means caution when moving forward (that’s in my own words, sue me). So here we are, defeated. What have we learnt? What do we have in our back pockets to aid us in moving forward? In the forefront of your mind, what are you going into the next season with? 

I have been feeling lately like I’m always losing. So much so that when I win, it doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything. However, as a lifelong learner, I realize that I’m always learning something new, whether in victory or defeat. I tend to learn more when I’m on my face, though. Each time I get back up, I’m better, wiser, and stronger. 

Note to my beauties: if you think you’re on a losing streak, stop and think about what you can learn from it. Believe it or not, this prepares you for your winning season. When you start to win, you’ll have learnt so much that you will reap and rejoice abundantly in your success because of what you have sacrificed. Keep going. Don’t stop. You will win. 

QOTD: What lessons are you learning in your losing season? 

Love from all ends, 
Bella 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Upside Down

-
On January 19, 2017 my world changed forever.  There I was, lost, small, helpless and oh so young. I lost my mom to sudden sickness, and since then, I've never been the same.  Hi, my name is Bella Levy and I think I'm depressed. There are days when I think, 'what is life?' and there are days when I'm ready and pumped to do something new. I've never resonated with motivational speake rs because they are never real. What I feel right now is real.  I've always felt deep down that I want to live a full, flourishing and exciting life: travel the world, meet tons of new people, fall in love, dance on the moon, learn new languages, laugh, swim with sharks (that's a bit excessive seeing that I can't even swim), go on exotic adventures with my best friend, climb a mountain, go on a yacht and..... you get the gist. But I barely made it through high school and I'm not talking academically, even though my academics did take a deep dive.  I mean, emotionally...
Read more

Live Life For You!

-
Hello there Beauties!  I think we should all aim to be self-aware in 2026. They often say that comparison is the thief of joy, but it is much, much deeper than that. During the Christmas/New Year holiday, a popular Jamaican social media influencer was allegedly arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States of America. Why he was arrested, I don’t know because I don’t care to know the details (largely because it’s not my business). The responses to this and about this on Jamaican social media has been….. strange (for lack of a better word). The lack of empathy towards the situation has been quite concerning. People are saying if he was committing crimes to be able to live a certain lifestyle, then he deserves it, and other things along that line. What stood out most to me though, is that there were people saying these influencers show a fake life on social media that discourages the 9-5 lifestyle, meanwhile their own life that they’re showing is unattainable. ...
Read more

“Hol’ Up Yuh Stress?” No Boss. 🚫

-
Hello there Beauties! “Hol’ up yuh stress!” That’s one of the most toxic statements I’ve ever heard on the internet, besides “weh yah bawl fa? yah b*ttyman?”  Honestly, one of the reasons we have so many mentally unstable Jamaican men is because mothers and fathers are not raising emotionally stable men. Jamaican men are so toxic that they associate being aware of and in tune with your emotions with being gay, and that’s the root cause of many of our issues.  At what point did we reduce identifying, acknowledging, validating, feeling, and combatting our emotions to pure femininity? Oh dem inna dem “soft girl era” but when that man loses his mind, you’re complaining?  Let’s think logically here. Don’t you think the world would be so much better if everyone was open to dealing with their emotions?  Men’s Mental Health Month is super important, and it’s a great chance to talk about something that often gets brushed aside. Even though mental health awareness is on the ...
Read more