Being graceful in defeat?

Having presence with a state of grace, ease and joy is not just a nice, tranquil place to visit on a sunny day when things are going well, it is not the destination of a lifetime of meditation. It is your saving grace when faced with utter defeat, it is what allows you to face the enemy, hold your ground and the line with your friends and comrades. It is in the most testing of times that you find out what your character truly is, who you really are and whether the practice of being presence and holding yourself with the same stance of peacefully and objective mind that you were able to do so when things were good and calm. That is what we practise for in the good times, it is for the battlefield of life, when the times get rough, the good get going, when they are called to action, they turn up and stand ready.

We all face different flows in life, the deep currents of our life circumstances, the wheel of luck that is genetics, the social world we are born into with unfairness built into the foundations, that is the hand we are dealt. There is nothing you can do to change the past and the future turns out in a constantly surprising manner, never in the way we expect and often counter to our hopes and intention of our action. The only thing that is left in our control is how we act in the moment, in the thin slither of time that is the present moment, that is only area of effect we have and it is the only thing that is totally our responsibility, the rest of it is illusionary, we might feel like it is our fault, bad things might happen but we only need to worry about turning up and doing our best, which is normally trying to be a little better than last time.

Being a better version of yourself than yesterday is both the simplest thing in the world and a never ending task that only becomes more difficult with everyday and can only end in defeat. It is a mission that is unachievable, it literally lasts a lifetime, and everyone ends up losing their wicket, no one wins every time and certainly not with certainty. Even the best sporting teams ends their record breaking wining streaks and each win in those streaks are not certain, we might have the illusion of a team being unbeatable, even the best world series baseball team lost games in their season.

It is defeat that challenges us to be better, the taste of defeat is bitter and poisonous, a single bad game can destroy a career, it can plant the seeds of doubt, take someone out of a winning state of mind and into the depths of the jitters, when someone stops doing, being present and gets trapped in negative and destructive thoughts. That is why the inner game gets so much attention, it the focus of the peak performance movement, how to bring presence to the actions that you want to perform. However that same presence is what you want to bring to every moment, being in presence with a state of grace, ease and joy is not about doing, it is not action rather it is being, it is not about the weather it is about the climate.

Being presence is the changing of your character or the way of being in the world, it is not just there for your victories rather it is who you are in defeat, and in life we get plenty of chance to practise losing. It might feel important that you keep losing to your friend in “friendly” games of tennis but it is not, except as practise for losing in the big things, whether that is your career, health, relationships. You have to decide if the little things are practise or all important, and as it is hard to learn from life altering event and easy to learn from practise, it is probably better to frame most defeats as practise rather than defining moment that confirm that you have been wasting your time on hopeless dream. When you have a negative take on something, you have just created another problem that has to be dealt with rather than tackling the issue.

We are totally responsible for our reactions to things, our first thought pop up like a guard dog barking at every passing car, it is up to us to reassure the dog and calm it back down, and if instead we start barking as well, it is down to us that we are having a barking contest with our own subconscious. Someone has to be the adult in the room and it is always you, especially when it comes to your own mind, if you are having negative, unhelpful thoughts it is up to you to face those negative thoughts and find out why you are having them, it almost always comes down to a distortion in thinking and the best way to tackle it is by talking to yourself like a friends. Something that is far harder than it sounds as you are trapped in there with a very loud guard dog, that is why externalising thoughts with a journal, or a conversation with a friend, as when you do, you get to heard the crazy out loud and crazy hates to be challenged, that is why thoughts are so fleeting, if they stayed in focus you would not put up with them.

Half the battle of being graceful is being able to stop listening to those negative thoughts that keep on popping up and disturbing our peacefulness which is the natural resting point of our consciousness when it stops barking and instead just listens and keeps watch. Which is a clue as to how we reach that point where we stop shaking the tray of our thoughts, feelings and emotions, we need to let go by letting thing be, that is the action of letting go, we stop stirring ourselves up and let things settle down.

As oil and water separate given enough time, so we have to do the same with our thoughts, and to do so we need to act like we already have that clear mind which listens to exactly what is happening rather than trying to constantly guess what is going to happen next or is worried about what has already happened. The mind needs to stop so that gracefulness can emerge from the depths, it is there and it is awaiting your presence because you are already there, you just have to let things be instead of searching for it, once you stop you get to have presence with a state of grace, ease and joy, and having had the experience it becomes easier to return to that pleasant land.