Is self-esteem conditional?  It shouldn't be.

Our psychological health should be unconditional.  It shouldn't be dependent on our experiences with wins and losses.  Losing, which happens more often than winning and can have a direct connection with low self-esteem, is an inherent part of competition.  So why do we let it affect our self-esteem if it is actually more common than we realize?

But the bigger question to ask is this:  is there reason to think that competition is always psychologically damaging to some degree?

If losing has the possibility of dragging us down, does winning have the possibility of uplifting us beyond what should feel good?  The rush of winning can lift us beyond our normal level of high self-esteem, almost to the point of looking down on our rivals.  There's nothing wrong with winning or enjoying it, but it stands to reason that it has the same potential that losing does to affect our psychological health.

No matter the situation or the outcome, our psyche should have little to no connection to the result or outcome of a competition.  It's okay to like winning, and it's okay to be a little down when you lose.  But put it in context of these discussions to make sure you still are okay with yourself!

We continue our discussion on self-esteem by examining one thing:  anticipation.

If you've ever heard the saying, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall," then you can relate to this direct connection.  The higher the stakes, the harder it is to accept losing.  The more we invest, the more we can potentially lose.  Ultimately, the more importance we put on winning, the more destructive is losing.

Sometimes, the investment in success comes naturally.  If our team makes it to the Super Bowl, where one game of 60 minutes of football determines the champion of the NFL for that season, we naturally put a lot of importance on winning that particular game because we are so close to the championship.  But if our team loses, does that mean our team failed to have a successful season?  Does that mean our investment in the team reflects upon us and should lower our self-esteem?

What furthers this is the anticipation of losing.  When we put so much emphasis and importance on winning, we naturally build up an anticipation of the possibility of not succeeding as well.  This anticipation contributes to the problem:  we can't possibly bear to lose, for if we do, it will be a catastrophe!

Failure is a natural part of life.  Disappointment is inevitable.  We can be sad we didn't win.  We can be frustrated as well.  But perhaps it should never rise to a level where it becomes unreasonable or unsafe.

In our continued discussion on self-esteem and how it relates to sportsmanship and competition, consider the following:

Why does losing lead to poor self-esteem?  Well, perhaps it is because most competitors lose most of the time!

Think about it statistically.  The best probability is a 50/50 chance when the competition consists of two teams (or just competitors).  So when competitions increase to more than just two competitors, the odds change and each team has a better chance to lose than to win; that probability of losing directly increases as the number of competitors increases.  As such, people who compete are exposed to much more failure than success, whether it be athletics or a simple contest.

Further, this is just a macro view of failure being rampant in competition.  Specific examples such as the science (or art) of hitting in baseball drive the point home.  The best hitters in baseball, on average, get a hit three out of every ten times they come up to bat.  That means that the greats who are enshrined in the Hall of Fame failed seven out of every ten times!

If people feel the need to prove themselves worthy by winning, they're in for a rude awakening.  The worst thing we can do is attach our self-esteem to whether we win or lose at any competition.

The next few weeks will dive into a discussion about competition and its relationship with self-esteem.

We live in a society and a culture where we set benchmarks and expectations in the social arena.  It's not even about who makes the most money or who is the most successful in life.  Instead, it's about whether you have moved out of your parents' home, whether you've found a partner, started a family, etc., and having accomplished all of these things as quickly as possible.  The person who lives on his own at 21 years old is apparently more successful than the person who lives with his parents at 35 years old in the competition of life.

This relates to the idea of independence vs. dependency.  The person who is able to support himself and do everything without the help of others is, according to the above standard, winning.  The person who needs the assistance of others is losing.  It's not an exact science:  surely, there are people who are taking advantage of the system.  But in a vacuum, we are judging others (even subconsciously) based on accomplishments rather than character.

Not only is this line of thought a fallacy based on moral judgment, but now it has scientific evidence.  Studies show that cooperation (dependency) actually leave people feeling better about themselves, as opposed to the alternative of competition (independence).  Cooperation promotes control within oneself, whereas competition does the opposite.  As such, people who work with others (as opposed to against them) find themselves feeling more in control of their own lives.  So if the goal is to be in control of your own life, the solution is not to compete within society to meet those standard benchmarks of independence, but rather to cooperate and accept the necessity of dependence in certain areas.  After all, don't we rely on others to do things for us in order to allow us to be successful?  I don't have the ability to dry clean my clothes, compound my own prescriptions, or perform all four parts of my jazz quartet; I depend on others to do those for me.

The sooner we accept dependency and cooperation as the way of life (as opposed to life being a competition to gain independence as soon as possible), the more independent we will actually be.