UCLA football was destroyed in Palo Alto last Thursday (56 to 32) and my friends and I just so happened to be seated in enemy territory. We were a tiny sliver of blue amongst a sea of Cardinal. Fortunately for us, Stanford fans have a lot of class and are very welcoming hosts.

Experiencing such a crushing defeat allowed the opportunity to either walk around with our heads down or to consciously make the most of a bad situation (from UCLA’s perspective). The path of least resistance was a downward spiral towards negativity, while the path to positivity required self-discipline to rise above.

In defeat, I was reminded that self-discipline is largely a matter of directing our own thoughts.

Here are a few lessons I learned from finding self-discipline in defeat:

• Real leadership consists of the ability to lift the spirits of those around you
• There are always opportunities to connect, network, and learn from your “competition”
• We may not be in total control of our outcomes/results, but we are in control of guiding our own thoughts
• With the right attitude, defeat is only temporary and all defeats or failures offer valuable lessons
• When feeling down, find a way to give more attention to those things that elevate your state
• There is power in celebrating other people’s successes

In order to me to learn these lessons of Discipline, I had to be in a specific state of mind or feeling state.

Here are some of then negative feelings I first felt when encountering defeat:

• Pride
• Ego
• Frustration
• Anger

Here are the areas I consciously gave more attention to and which created more pleasing, positive results:

• Gratitude
• Understanding
• Patience
• Connection
• Love

When facing defeat in your life how will You choose to respond?

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