No Excuses

I hate when people always need to make excuses for why they lose. "I should've won, but the ref didn't like me.", "It was an unfair match.", "I only lost because the sun wasn't shining, and I can't fight when it's cloudy.", "It's not my fault, they cheated." "I wasn't wearing my lucky rash guard.". I understand that sometimes people have valid points, but they're generally not the reason they lost. I always have an excuse when I lose, too...on that given day and time my opponent performed better than I did. It's as simple as that.

If you're focused on believing that you lost due to something beyond your control, then you lose twice because you don't learn anything from it. You have to be able to be honest with yourself, and see the mistakes you made that led to your defeat. There's always room for improvement. Even if it was an unfair match, does that mean you had no chance to win? There are rarely women at my own age and weight for me to compete with, so I could easily say I've lost just because of that, but it's not true. Between karate and jiu-jitsu, I have more wins than losses on my amateur record, but I have learned way more from the losses. I look at each loss, and see what I could have done to improve my odds. Pretty much the only thing I have learned from the wins is that I am a bad-ass mofo, not to be messed with. But I already knew that.


So whenever you tell yourself that the loss wasn't your fault, ask if you are being honest. Put your ego aside, accept your defeat, learn something, and do better next time. Or just blame everything on someone or something else and get nowhere, it's up to you. Even if you really did lose just because the ref didn't like you, that might be your fault, too. Maybe you're a douche. I'm just saying.