Learning to lose is important for one more reason. Researchers found that how we handle winning and losing are connected. If we throw a tantrum and default to avoidance after a loss, we’re more likely to settle into a protective state where we avoid challenging competitions after a win. Similarly, if we respond to a loss by aggressively trying to tear down the opponent to not have it impact our self-esteem, then we take the same approach when we win: defaulting to overly enhancing our “dominance,” which then blinds us to seeing how to improve.
