How To Lose - A Lesson in Being Cocky

(photo by annemarlow)

Ever heard of the mercy rule in softball? This rule states that after the 3rd inning, if a team is winning by more than 10 runs, the game is over. Turns out last Wednesday, it was the bottom of the 3rd, and we were up by 9 runs, and batting. We had only been playing 20 minutes and we were not ready to be done.

We got cocky. We started joking around saying things like "only hit base hits" or "hey John, strikeout so I can bat again." Sure enough everyone did get out easily, so we got to play another inning. When we took the field again, encouraged by our comfortable lead, we all played different positions then we normally play. In these new positions, we made lots of errors and before we could finally get 3 outs, they had scored 8 runs.

We were now only up by one run. The cocky jokes in the dugout were no more, the game faces were back. This return from cocky to serious didn't seem to help much because where we had previously been batting effortlessly, the first three batters got out 1, 2, 3. It couldn't have taken more than two minutes.

Back out to the field we went, now only up by one run, you better believe we played our normal positions. This time we played solid defence, but the other team had some great hits and scored 3 runs. Twenty minutes earlier we were worred about the "mercy rule" ending our game early, and now we were losing by 2 runs.

We had one last round of at bats to go for the win, but it was too late - we were victims of our own shock ("I can't believe we could really lose after being up by 9 runs") and could not get a hit. We lost by 2 runs.

Of course we were furious. Upset for two reasons: 1. That we had allowed ourselves to get cocky and 2. That we allowed the shock of "we might actually lose" to cripple us.

I've had some time to think about it now, and I'm glad we lost that game. If we would have scored one more run that inning, we would have won easily, patted ourselves on the back for the blowout, and gone home after a mere 20 minutes. Intstead we got to play the full 60 minutes, and learned two valuable lessons. 1. Don't get cocky 2. Don't fall victim to the shock of "what if we really lose?"

This happens all the time in Tennis. As soon as I think I have a set "in the bag", the other player gets back in the game. If I ever think "What if I really lose to this person?", I really lose to that person.

And like all good sports lessons this seems to apply to life and business as well. I remember one project at my previous employer where I "got cocky" and thought I could do no wrong. A few days later, oh I did wrong. Ever gotten cocky with your marriage? Yeah you know what happens next.

So at TheBlogFrog I'm determined to not take any victory for granted, and not let up until.... well never.