Failure can't define us -- but it can help us succeed

Nobody likes a loser.

Have you ever noticed how we, as a society, make so much out of the winners in life, while at the same time trip over ourselves to avoid the losers?

Everybody loves a winner, the old saying goes. If you are a winner at whatever you do, people love you. They want to be like you. They want to know what it takes for you to be the winner that you are.

But if you're a loser -- you might as well be dead in the eyes of some. Nobody wants to know what you're doing right, because they just assume everything you do is wrong. You can't get a phone call returned if you're a loser -- nobody wants to talk to you, maybe out of fear that your lack of success is somehow going to rub off on them.

The media, especially, loves a winner. How many times, during this past summer's Olympic Games, did we read, hear and watch stories about swimmer Michael Phelps, who set seven world records and won an Olympic-record eight gold medals in the pool? We heard about everything you could possibly want to know about Phelps, from his upbringing (he has attention-deficit disorder and was told by his school counselors that he wouldn't amount to much of anything), his family and even his amazing diet (which consists of so many calories that it would send most of us mere mortals into obesity faster than you can say "hardening of the arteries.").

Then there was the U.S. Olympic basketball team, a team of NBA athletes we already knew quite a lot about (if we actually pay attention to the NBA during the regular season). Players like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwight Howard and Jason Kidd have had their life stories told over and over again before the Olympics, and we heard even more in the days leading up to their gold-medal win over Spain in the finals.

There were many more stories of winners told throughout the games, but we didn't hear much about those who didn't win the gold, and even less about those who didn't perform well enough to earn even a bronze medal. Is that lazy journalism? Are we exerting so much energy covering the winners that the losers are cast aside and not worthy of our time?

Unfortunately, it comes down to a simple fact of life -- we love to know about the winners, and really aren't all that interested in the losers. But have you ever thought about those people who aren't successful on the world stage -- whether it's the Olympics or some other arena in life -- who are still winners in the game of life?

Many times, it's how an individual responds to defeat that ultimately defines whether or not that person is a winner in the ultimate game -- the game of life. It's how we bounce back from a losing effort that ultimately determines whether or not we are a success -- not in the eyes of the media, but in our own mind.

One Olympic athlete who I am quite sure fits this mold is a young man by the name of Brad Vering. Vering is a wrestler from the small town of Howells, Neb. He was a three-time state champion who went on to become a national champion in college while wrestling at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and was a two-time member of the U.S. Olympic team in Greco-Roman wrestling.

I've had a number of opportunities over the years to meet and talk with Vering. When I was publishing an online wrestling website, I was able to feature Vering and had the chance to talk with him personally about his successes and failures in the sport.

Vering has worked incredibly hard to earn the chance to compete in two Olympics during his life. He has had a lot of success, but has also failed on numerous occasions. In fact, after his defeat in the 2004 Olympics, Vering struggled to keep his status as one of the best in his weight class. He tasted defeat on numerous occasions and almost didn't get a second chance at competing in the Olympics.

This summer, Vering was winning his first match when he was suddenly turned in the final 10 seconds. The two points he gave up was enough for his opponent to earn the victory and, in essence, kill Vering's hopes of winning a gold medal.

Does this make Vering a loser? Certainly not -- this young man has achieved more success than most of his critics could ever hope to achieve. I haven't had the chance to talk with Vering about his future plans, but I'm going to bet that whatever it is he decides to do with his life beyond wrestling is going to be a huge success. The lessons he has learned in victory -- and, more important, in defeat -- are lessons he will carry into whatever he does with his life from here on out. He may not have been a winner in his sport's ultimate arena -- but he is a winner in the ultimate game and will be throughout his life because of those lessons.

A number of years ago, the shoe company Nike created a commercial centering around basketball legend Michael Jordan. The commercial showed Jordan, in slow motion, getting off a bus and making his way through the bowels of an unknown arena.

As he walked, you could hear his voice talking about all the failures he has had as a basketball player. Many times he was part of a team that went down to defeat. He went many years without winning an NBA title. He was called upon to take the game winning shot and missed several times.

The commercial highlighted all the failures Jordan has experienced in his life as a professional basketball player. This man is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, won six NBA titles and numerous Most Valuable Player awards, scoring titles and nominations to All-NBA teams, and yet all this commercial focused on was the failures he experienced. But it was how the commercial ended that brought home the importance of experiencing failure -- "I have failed numerous times in my life," Jordan says in the video. "And it is because I have failed, that I succeed."

Nobody likes losing, and nobody goes out and tries to lose in the game of life. And as much as we hope we can be successful in everything we do, failure (or the fear of it) should not define who we are -- it should drive us to learn from the mistakes that we made and help us succeed, no matter what we do in our lives. It is from losing that we can be a winner, and if we can be a winner in our own minds, it really doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks of us.