We Are Way More Than the Scoreboard

I'm a huge Canadian hockey fan.

As a young junior high school teacher, I was in a gymnasium watching on TV with 200+ wildly enthusiastic kids in 1972 when Team Canada's Paul Henderson scored the winning goal against the Russians. Unbridled joy exploded throughout the entire country. It was one of those moments you never forget.

How deeply Canada's identity is wrapped up in ice hockey is hard to explain unless you're Canadian. A large percentage of the 41 million of us likely qualify for therapy on how to constructively navigate the emotions fully intertwined with this game.

So yes, losing out on both the men's and women's hockey gold medals at the 2026 Olympics is heartbreaking for many of us, even as we can intellectually appreciate that it's just a game.

We All Have Our Own “Big Game”

While the overwhelming majority of us never reach the athletic pinnacle of Olympic sport, we each have our own personal version of "losing the big one."

It might be a presentation that flops. A project that fails. An exam you bombed. A deal that fell through. Whatever it is, it stings.

Whether the moment plays out on a world stage or in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, the question that matters is: what's the best strategy to recover, learn fast, and come back stronger?

Here's what the research actually shows:

The athletes who bounce back fastest aren't the ones who feel it least. They're usually the ones who feel it fully - and then channel it into something constructive.

Losing, especially when you've poured everything into something, is personal. It can hit surprisingly hard. And what constitutes a "big game" is defined by each of us. It's never something to minimize.

5 Strategies That Actually Work

1. Let yourself feel it first. Don't rush to "get over it." Allowing yourself to grieve a loss for a day or two is healthy and necessary. Suppressing it tends to make it linger longer.

2. Separate your identity from the outcome. You are not the scoreboard. The loss reflects one performance on one day. It’s not your worth as a person, athlete, or competitor. This is easy to say and hard to internalize, however reminding yourself of it repeatedly does work.

3. Replay with purpose, not punishment. There's a meaningful difference between reviewing what went wrong to learn versus torturing yourself with "what ifs." Give yourself one or two focused sessions to extract lessons, then close the book on replaying it emotionally.

4. Reframe what the "big game" actually represents. Most athletes who reflect honestly will tell you the losses shaped them more than the wins. Adversity forces real growth that winning simply doesn't require.

5. Give yourself a timeline. Tell yourself something like: "I'll give myself this week to be disappointed, then I'm going to redirect that energy." It honors the grief while preventing it from becoming a permanent identity.

Watch Out for the Spiral

Heartbreak from a loss can sometimes slide into broader self-criticism, anxiety, or withdrawal.

If you find it affecting your sleep, your relationships, or your overall mood for more than a couple of weeks, talking to a therapist or counselor is genuinely worth it.

The Most Important Reminder

You are way more than the scoreboard.

A full life includes many games, and the gold medal moments matter precisely because we are playing in the arena, not watching from the safety of the bleachers.

Think Big. Start Small. Act Now.

— Lorne

Garrett’s View: Just another reminder to reread The Man in the Arena.

“...Who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Here’s to many more achievements, victories and even defeats.

- Garrett

AI Response: A landmark study published in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology found that athletes who engaged in deliberate reflection after a loss (rather than rumination) showed measurably faster performance recovery. Psychologist Carol Dweck's decades of research on growth mindset reinforces your point about reframing: people who view setbacks as information rather than verdicts on their ability consistently outperform those who don't — not just in sport, but in business and academics too. And perhaps most striking: a study out of Northwestern University found that failure followed by persistence actually increases the probability of future success, with scientists who bounced back from early-career grant rejections ultimately publishing more high-impact work than those who succeeded on the first try. The scoreboard really is just one moment in a much longer game.

We Are Way More Than the Scoreboard

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