Pickleball, in its essence, is a zero-sum activity because it's built around the concept that there's going to be one winner and one loser.

In a zero-sum world, our opponent's victory is our loss. Their positive is our negative. But it doesn't have to be that way. Think about your losses as simply learning opportunities so now you have a positive and a positive.

Let's go into an analogy metaphor where you, or a loved one or a partner of yours, drops a dish that means something to you and it breaks or cracks. That's the reality. That is the thing that happened.

How we react to that reality is 100% entirely within our ability;

i) We can just get upset about it and despair over it
ii) We can acknowledge that these things happen and it's human nature to make such sorts of mistakes and drop things
iii) When an opponents overpower us or plays a really good rally, we can celebrate their rally rather than getting bogged down.
iv) Embrace the beauty of the cracks and understand losses are just a natural outcome.

We have a certain amount of control over the way we react to and handle adverse events when we play pickleball at the different levels of events; from the end of the game to the rally, all the way down to being inside of a rally.

Turn potentially negative loss into a positive, which is a celebration of your opponent's win.

Pickleball System; https://betterpickleball.com/system/