A crew that loses together and shows up at the dock the next morning is tougher than one that’s never lost.

Toughness is not an unbeaten record. It is the willingness to come back after the thing you were afraid of has already happened. A team that has never lost does not yet know whether it can hold together when it does. Once a group has survived a bad morning and turned up anyway, losing stops being the worst thing that could happen.

After your next loss, pay attention to who comes back, and be one of them. Say almost nothing about the result. Being there for the next session is the message.