How To Cope With Defeat After Having Been Defeated

'Defeat' – what an ugly, depressing word. Life's most negative experience, you may say – the one thing we all dread, the reality that lies behind the fear which prevents many from even trying to achieve their dreams, a dirty word in this society where we worship success and achievement. I believe, though, that how we handle defeat has everything to do with the quality of our success.

Consider the words of the one writer who perfectly expresses the experience of depression: the author of "Ecclesiastes". "It is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting… sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart," he says.

What a misery! we may say. And yet the truth is that many who achieve great fortune have personal experience of the worst feelings that accompany defeat. Take as an example J.K. Rowling for whom success was rather bewildering; for a long time she carried within her the memory of being the person whose opinion was of no interest whatsoever. Now the world cares enormously about her opinion; but she will probably never forget what it felt like to consider "what a mess I have made of my life."

From the point of view of a creative writer, defeat is a regular experience. You needn't go far on the internet to find amusing lists of rejection letters sent by publishers to the authors of very famous books. The experience of all these – as it turns out, temporary – defeats – gives an author a sense of perspective. Perhaps this is the sense of perspective that the Roman Emperors never had – those who were deified, anyway; nor the most notorious of the dictators we see around us running various regimes in the world today. To be at the very top, believing you are infallible, or a god, or universally loved, and to annihilate all who oppose you must be the most inhuman of all states to be in.

Therefore, when we struggle to hold onto our dreams, when we strive to succeed, when we offer ourselves again and again, and are turned down, or rejected, or knocked back…. instead of hardening ourselves against that experience, and going into denial, we must take it into ourselves, and accept it as part of our life-journey, and allow the emotions that it arouses to run their course. This is the dynamic way to handle defeat, to acknowledge that we can ride it like surf, and pass over, or sometimes through the waves, to the deep, calm ocean beyond.

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