Okay, before I get to yapping, I totally understand how cringeworthy this post may sound. In saying this, the attitude I aim to uncover here is common amongst athletes, successful business folks and even your friendly neighbour who always has a smile on their face.

I should define what a loss may look like. To me, a loss is any moment that forces me to face myself. A failed attempt, a stupid mistake, a misread situation… anything that stings enough to make me pay attention. But the more I look at it, the more I realise losses aren’t walls. They’re building blocks. Stack two of them the right way and suddenly it looks like a “W”.

There actually is some foundation for this theoretically. More specifically, three acts:

Act I – Disruption: You take the L. Something breaks your rhythm. There’s research showing that struggling first can actually make learning deeper — often called “productive failure.”

Act II – Reorganisation: You take the mess apart and rebuild your approach. This is basically getting better at understanding your own thinking — metacognition.

Act III – Integration: You come back sharper. The loss becomes part of your new identity, not something you hide. This echoes research on post-traumatic growth, where challenge becomes transformation.

Put simply: Loss + Loss → Growth → Win.

Three people pop up in my mind who truly embody this.

David Goggins is the perfect example of someone who started with every reason to quit — trauma like no other, mental barriers, unhealthy and surrounded by doubts from others. When he set his mind on becoming a Navy SEAL, he rose to the challenge every single day, especially during setbacks. Goggins learned to turn those doubts into fuel. His “cookie jar” mindset is built on taking the negativity, the limits, the dismissals — and flipping them into discipline. I recommend his book Can't Hurt Me for a better insight into his journey.

Sha’Carri Richardson faced a different kind of negativity — public scrutiny, criticism of her attitude and appearance, and people counting her out before she even returned to the track. Rather than allowing it to overwhelm her, she embraced it and let it transform her. While not immediate, success came through, especially as quoted after her 2023 World Athletics Championship win, “I’m not back, I’m better.” It wasn’t a comeback line — it was a statement. The pressure didn’t break her; it sharpened her.

One GOAT that embodies the attitude is the legendary NFL player Tom Brady. In an interview, he openly says he’s driven more by criticism than success. He flips doubt into fuel. Any comment about him slowing down, getting old, drives him to perform. Brady isn’t just competing with opponents — he’s competing with the narratives around him. Same pattern: take the negativity, sharpen yourself with it. Click the pic for the clip!

There’s something poetic about everything fitting into a three-act structure. Every great story, whether fictional or true, resonates with the theme of three stages — in films, books, and legends. We feel the pain even more when losses strike us again: the story of the underdog who ultimately succeeds against all odds. The best part? You don’t have to just watch this story unfold; you can live it yourself. If this structure works for heroes on screens and pages, who’s to say you can’t apply it to your own life? Two losses, one rewrite — and suddenly, your narrative starts to look a lot like a win.

If you want to dive deeper into the “three acts” idea or the research behind how people grow through setbacks, here are the three easy entry points that inspired this section:

• Productive Failure (Manu Kapur)

  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11409-014-9129-6

• Metacognition Explained (APA overview)

  https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/ptn/2019/02/metacognition

• Post-Traumatic Growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun summary)

  https://positivepsychology.com/post-traumatic-growth