So that’s the World Cup over for another four years. I didn’t watch the final. I can’t bear to watch sports, mainly because I don’t like the fact that one team has to lose.

I am adamant that I am not a competitive person, but … this is not entirely the truth.

A couple of Christmases ago, there was, well, let’s just call it, ‘The Scrabble Incident’. It wasn’t pretty. Two grown adults reduced to squabbling schoolchildren. Just vying for second place!

His mother had already put down ‘Zo’ on a triple word score to take the lead. Zo? Seriously? “The name of an indigenous people in Burma, duh! And yes it’s admissible, Mattel changed its rules on Proper Nouns in 2010!”

I think I avoid sports and games because I may, in fact, be an intensely competitive person. And I’ve realised that petulant temper tantrums in the face of losing, are not becoming.

Around this time last year, I wrote an article on ‘dealing with disappointment’. It was in response to finding out that the play I wrote for the ‘Famous’ playwriting competition had not been picked to be performed. I was gutted. Turns out, my best friend’s play did get picked. Hmmm.

I have always thought it mean, at the Oscars, when they’ve announced the winner and they are up on stage thanking their mothers, that the cameras then pan round to all the nominees who didn’t get their name called.

Some of whom seem to forgotten their acting skills, as many a sulky scowl has been caught on international television.

She’s my friend and her play was really good. It was a great lesson in losing gracefully. A skill we can all benefit from because if we are ‘in the game’ (whatever game that might be), there are always going to be some losses. It’s how we handle them that counts.

Someone recently shared this disheartening story. His son was playing in a junior league football game.

At half-time his team was down several goals and he came over to the bleachers crying. His parents assumed the tears were because he was losing and they were about to offer a lesson in good sportsmanship.

But no, it was other spectators in the crowd, jeering, being nasty and calling his teammates names for not winning that had upset him.

What are we role-modelling here?

If all the emphasis is on winning and we are not allowed to lose, then we don’t learn to handle and cope with losing for when we inevitably do.

Taking a loss too hard can rock our self-esteem. Without perspective, being a ‘loser’ can undermine our beliefs in our abilities, dash our hopes and ultimately lead us to give up trying — surely the greatest loss of all.

Luckily my skin must be thickening with age. The sting of last year’s rejection didn’t last too long and once again I wrote a play for this year’s competition — this time in conjunction with the aforementioned successful playwriting friend (I’m no dummy).

The experience was such a good one. We worked hard on it and pushed each other. In the end we felt as proud about working together so well as we did with the finished product. So last week, when they announced that ours was one of the six selected to be produced, it was really just icing on the cake.

I finally understood the adage, ‘it’s not the winning that counts, it’s how you play the game.’

There is a great improvisation game that helps build this muscle for handling winning/losing. It’s called die!

Not dissimilar to the old schoolyard game of ‘categories’: you go around the circle naming things but if you hesitate, pause, repeat or stumble, the rest of the group shouts ‘DIE!’… and you do, in your most committed, dramatic fashion.

It really pushes my challenge buttons, because my instinct is to try and be good at the naming — trying to win and be the last person standing.

But this is not the point of the game. The point is to celebrate not winning.

I’ve learned there is little room for big egos and wannabe ‘winners’ in Improv (very much in my focus with our big show coming up this week).

There’s a fine line between being ‘the bomb’ and just ‘bombing’ out on that stage. And we need to be able to recover from both. We have to be willing to fail, to take a fall, to be the character the audience boos, and when it’s our turn, just ‘die’ our best.

“Play to make the others look good,” is the motto — a good one for me to remember. Then it’s no longer about ourselves, it is about putting our heart and soul into whatever we’re doing — then any winning/losing becomes just a temporary upshot.

In coaching, ‘performance’ goals are much stronger than ‘winning’ goals. Ultimately we have no control of our competition.

Playing against ourselves, however, means that each opportunity out there is a way to learn, grow and improve on the last time.

Can we view a ‘loss’ as motivation to try harder and learn from our mistakes? A helpful strategy in any game — to be winning, even when we are losing.

Three tips for losing with grace:

Don’t blame the umpire (the judges, the HR department, whomever)

Congratulate the winner wholeheartedly — without them we wouldn’t have learned where we could improve our ‘game’.

Suck up the sting — there will be another chance to try harder.

Equally important, winning with grace:

Keep the ‘booyah’s’ out of the competition’s face (difficult sometimes I know, but good manners)

Show gratitude for the folks that got us there (“I’d like to thank my mother…”) especially the competition for helping us to up our game.

Retain perspective — winning is a milestone to celebrate, also a time to consider “where do we go from here?”.

A gauntlet’s been thrown down for a Scrabble match this weekend. Having not played since, I’m on the fence about the challenge.

I suppose there’s still time to brush up on my Y and Z words … Or I could just enjoy the game, practice losing gracefully (and not announcing to the whole of Bermuda next week if I do, by some miracle, actually win).

Can I smile at their ‘Zen’ (even down for triple points)? ‘I’m playing to make you look good!’ I’ll say. (But I’ll get you next time).

(The Hilarity for Charity, ‘Improv Comedy Cup Match’ is this Thursday and Friday at Daylesford.)

Julia Pitt is a trained Success Coach and certified NLP practitioner on the team at Benedict Associates. For further information contact Julia on (441) 705-7488, www.juliapittcoaching.com.