Be Resilient. You learn much more when you lose than when you win. Stop worrying about the loss and strive to eliminate things that interfere with your success. Learn to find your successes in a performance even if you lose. Don’t let a failure take the fun out of your sport.
Parents, teach your children to be resilient. When they first learn to walk and they fall down, we build their resilience by getting them up and going again. Continue helping them to be resilient by helping them find what they can do to improve. It’s natural to some and not for others they will need your loving help and guidance.
Encourage them in their sport. When they lose don’t make a big deal about it, but help them identify what was good about their performance. Let them talk to you about it. Make sure to listen and not discount their efforts. It’s important for them to be realistic and that means finding the ‘good’ in a ‘bad day’ as well as finding the bad. Then, ask what they think could have made a difference.
Don’t let them get sidetracked by pointing out bad calls or errors of others. Acknowledge it, but help them focus on things they can control. Part of being resilient is knowing what you can and cannot control so that you can improve. Could they have gotten more sleep? What about pre-competition preparation like practice, fitness or mental centering? Work on things that are controllable.
Now brush it off and get back in there. You’ll never know what you can do if you don’t just do it!