When is winning losing

These important early play experiences help us learn how to process our feelings. Losing a game or coming last in a race may seem like something small, but it can be a difficult moment for a child.

Try these easy tips to help your child learn how to process their feelings about winning and losing:. Talk it out! Prior to playing with friends talk about different scenarios with your little one.

If they lose the game, how will they feel? How will their friend feel? According to psychology professor Ian Robertson, of Trinity College in Dublin, "Winning's probably the single most important thing in shaping people's lives. Robertson has studied winning, and what winning can mean. Complete CBSNews. Robertson argues in his book, "The Winner Effect," that the reason it's so much fun to win is largely chemical.

It turns out Nobel Prize winners outlive the also-brilliant Nobel nominees by roughly two years. Baseball players who make it into the Hall of Fame have a couple of years on players who are turned away.

In Hollywood, it's really Winner Takes All: Academy Award-winners live, on average, four years longer than other actors. A scientist who wins a Nobel Prize will, of course, be able to be hired by any university in the world.

Huettel says the fact that there is often such a fine line between winning and losing doesn't seem to affect how we feel about second best. And they did something very, very clever: They just looked to see how happy athletes were when they won. They looked at photographs and had unbiased people coding what the facial expression were. An example: Bronze medalist Ryan Lochte, beaming on the podium, next to silver medalist Laszlo Cseh left, in Beijing in Olympians aren't the only ones who hate coming up short.

His clients -- from pro athletes to Little Leaguers and, of course, their parents -- have one thing in common, he says: "In their minds, losing is catastrophic. If you say, 'I want to run 40 miles a week,' that's within your control. The worst is not betting at all. Losing teaches you something. Having to try and going through the trials and tribulations to actually overcome, to get there, to win, to triumph, that's what makes life interesting.

Unless you win the tournament, you always go home as a loser. But you have to take the positive out of a defeat and go back to work. Improve to fail better. You learn how to keep going. You must simply study it, learn from it, and try hard not to lose the same way again. Then you must have the self-control to forget about it. Top Stories. Top Videos.