You can win at life by being a good loser

Irish Times

21-07-2025

We all screw up. Failure is part of life. But not all of us can brush it off easily.
A society that divides people into 'winners' and 'losers' amplifies the cost of failing. Through our smartphones and in our daily conversations, we're constantly reminded that there's always someone else doing better.
How should you deal with failure? And how do I resist that niggling sense that, deep down, I'm a loser?
Krzysztof Rowiński, a lecturer in cultural studies at
Trinity College Dublin
, is part of an international network of academics researching our understanding of failure. They met in Dublin a few weeks ago for a conference titled Fail Worse – a subversion of
Samuel Beckett
's famous quote: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' Some of their initial findings can be distilled into four general points:
READ MORE
1. 'Redemptive' failure narratives may be part of the problem
'If you look at library catalogues there has been an explosion of books that explore failure as a form of success – self-help books, coaching books, business books,' Rowiński tells The Irish Times. 'I saw that as a larger outgrowth of our optimistic culture where paradoxically failure narratives are on par with success narratives. But it's only because those failure narratives are redemptive failure narratives.'
Examples of the genre come from tech bros such as
Jeff Bezos
and
Elon Musk
, who love to talk about the failures they experienced before becoming obscenely rich. 'If you're not failing, you're not taking enough risks,' says Musk.
Rowiński tracked the use of 'fail better' as a phrase in public discourse. 'In late '80s you see a moderate interest and then it blows up in the '90s.' This coincided with the rise of the positive psychology movement and, more importantly perhaps, a drift internationally away from holding the rich and powerful accountable for their failures.
2. Political corruption and extreme inequality means some people can avoid any cost from their failures
There is a recognition of failure in corridors of power 'but always with a sense that we can overcome it with technology, or therapy, or some intervention', says Prof Debbie Lisle, of Queen's University Belfast school of history. Another member of the 'failure studies' network, she believes many of the world's biggest problems are exacerbated by 'toxic positivity'.
When it comes to war, the
migrant crisis
or
climate change
, 'the normalised dominant responses are all about this myth that we will overcome our failures and everything will be fine. Like climate change: 'It'll be fine; don't worry about it because we will use technology and adaptation; it's going to be amazing' ... and no it's not'.
We need 'a different vocabulary', she says. 'We're f**ed!' is her starting point. 'I start there and I make no apologies about that – but I'm not depressed about that. I'm like, let's be modest and humble and realistic about what's achievable, how we can create solidarities however temporary, probably dissonant, to try to do something.'
3. In other cultures everyone is a loser – so cheer up
Ireland is heavily influenced by the capitalistic, Anglo-American view of success and failure. Contrast this with eastern European countries.
'In our part of the world, the perception of failure is different,' says Adriana Mica, a Romanian-born sociologist who set up the Failure Lab at University of Warsaw. 'Failure is something like a skin but nobody treats it too seriously ... You see this in post-communist countries and postcolonial countries; they don't trust failure. They think failure is something politicians use as a rationalisation.'
This is not entirely healthy from a political viewpoint. It results in a situation where 'we are suspicious of success' and cynical or dismissive about failure. 'We did some research about Covid policy failures and people were saying: 'What policy failures? Covid was a scam.' So it's completely different.'
Her research is looking at why students drop out of education, and whether it is due to 'failure deprivation', or because they had 'no taste of failure', before reaching college. This may be a greater problem in more affluent societies. In countries such as Romania and Poland, she says, 'I think we still remember the hardships ... but it can change very quickly.'
4. You're a winner in God's eyes
In her latest book The Genius Myth, journalist Helen Lewis explores our understanding of 'natural talent'. Questioning the common perception that people 'deserve' their success, she draws attention to the relationship between capitalism and forms of eugenics. In previous centuries, financial rewards were distributed between 'superior' and 'inferior' races. Today there's a movement, tacitly supported by powerful figures in the United States, to rank human value by IQ score.
Speaking to Hugh Linehan on
The Irish Times Inside Politics podcast
, Lewis said, 'as someone who was raised Catholic and is now an atheist', she was 'surprised' while writing the book 'that I began to feel more warmly towards Christianity as a kind of social operating system because of [its] teaching that every one of God's children has a worth in his eyes – and that no one is better than anyone else'.
[
Justine McCarthy: We need to talk about why we're all so angry
Opens in new window
]
But you don't have to bring God into the picture to realise you're a winner. Keeping a sense of perspective is key. The truth is you can 'win' at life by being a good loser.