Losing

It sucks to lose.
There's no doubt about that.
The bitter feeling, the anger, the desire to take revenge just makes you feel so negative.
But is it bad?
I've been playing dota for close to 3 years now.
I'm a Pro.
No doubt.
How did I get so good? By winning?
No.
By losing.
No kidding.
When did I improve the most in my game?
When I was losing badly.
Getting my ass kicked, getting laughed at, being called a noob.
I was losing like nobody's business.
But I was with my friends and we wanted to win.
If we had lost heart and were afraid of losing, we would have never gotten as good as we are.
We analysed why we lost, what we could have done better for hours, day in day out. An onlooker friend told us that if he didn't play the game, he would have thought us generals commanding a battlefield.
Losing fueled our desire to become better.
If we won, we actually became complacent.
At one point we thought we were damn good. Then we lost terribly to another team. And that made us realise that we weren't good enough.
And we learnt from our mistakes. And from there we became truly strong.
We've met countless people who thought they're damn good.
And when they lose they give 1001 reasons as to why they lose.
They never thought of 1001 ways to become strong. Which we did.
When we were on a winning streak, I think close to maybe 100 games, the joy of winning wore off.
We realised that the most fun part of playing is growing. Becoming better, playing with people who were better.
Pushing ourselves to our limit. And really loving the game for its design. The limitless possibilty. Won't go further into the why DOTA is so attractive.
It's a test of skill, wit and teamwork. Trust in friends too.
So is losing bad?
Not if you take it as a positive thing. That you have much to learn, that's why you lose.
And which also means you must win when you can. So to make the person competing against you realise that the person has much to learn.
So go out there and win. And hold your head high when you lose. Learn. And become better :D