The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Notes -
To me the sting of defeat is always worse than the joy of victory. I’m a very non-competitive person, usually the first to turn down any kind of casual tournament or game. I never play PvP. I always concede first where it’s an option, unless I know with great certainty that I’m going to win.
It’s not that I don’t like winning, it’s that to me the joy of it is far more fleeting than defeat Where I Really Tried, which stings and which I think about long after the event. Recalling defeats hurts as if the loss was yesterday, while recalling triumphs doesn’t seem to capture any of the pleasure of the moment of victory. Being a loser in some competition doesn’t make me angry and aggressively motivated the way it seems to do to a lot of people. I can concede and feel no seething jealousy, no particular resentment, and whether I win or lose I usually forget about it quickly, unless it really feels serious in which case, as mentioned, losing is always worse than winning is great.
I don’t mean to sound like one of those depressives for whom every happiness seems temporary and every setback permanent, because I’d say I’m a pretty happy person. It’s more that I think I just don’t get as much out of both victory and defeat as other people do. Neither particularly motivates me, my happiest memories are all things like conversations with friends and loved ones, entertaining experiences, falling in love, that kind of thing. I can’t recall one real moment of personal triumph in the competitive sense that sticks with me, stuff like getting the job I wanted or getting into a good college was ten minutes of happiness (although really more like relief) before I continued with my day.
I think I’d like to become more competitive, but this attitude is holding me back from doing so. Has anyone made themselves more competitive?
I understand your hatred of defeat - I hate losing as much as you and I've lost an awful lot! This has lead me to a few mental frameworks which can make losing less painful:
Losing is a huge motivator for me not to lose - it forces me to critique what I'm doing, seek help, and actively make adjustments to 'lose less'. Losing is a motivator!
Losing means I'm learning - assuming you can repeat losing, if each time you 'lose less' it means you're winning more - 'winning' and 'losing' are not binary but rather ranges and distributions.
Losing is risk on behavior - seek to increase risk outside of your comfort zone. I've been on this forum enough know that you work in finance to some degree which is an institution where risk-seeking is dangerous. Too much risk causes all sorts of problems so so much of what you do is mitigating risk while maximizing growth. Your hatred of losing can also be a dislike of risk - as other people mentioned in responses this is largely female encoded. In many ways losing is a sort of risk tolerance - are you willing to lose more as an accumulation of risk?
Identify where you hate losing. Some activity you might lose in won't hurt you emotionally as much as others. For example, losing professionally could carry a huge risk. What about learning something new? Trying something new? Cooking something you never tried that's outside your wheelhouse? There might be many things you're less worried about
Change the framework - focus on trying to win instead of trying not to lose - rather than worry about, risk focus on trying to beat out other people. This is largely antisocial behavior but it can come at success - by being better at someone in a thing that's moderately important than you, you're worrying less about 'I hate losing' and more about improving yourself to be able to get ahead.
Ask forgiveness not permission - Once again it requires in engaging in more antisocial behavior, but just going ahead and doing things without first asking for permission or coordinating with others can be a useful competitive mindset - of course it isn't always useful in certain areas, but this sort of choice can allow you to more opportunities and to be more competitive without the 'I want to get ahead' mentality. Sometimes it's 'I want to get things done quickly'
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