UCLA football coach Red Sanders once said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

Like most kids growing up, for me the importance of finishing first or winning was always stressed. As a competitive person, I thought that second place was the same as last. Losing was a source of shame and bitterness. No one wants to be defined as a loser. In short, everyone wants to win.

Brandon Steiner, the owner and founder of the huge sports memorabilia company that bears his name, gave me some good advice recently. He told me that losing isn’t the opposite of winning; it’s a part of winning.

The more I think about his statement, the more I agree. However, I would make one small change: Losing isn’t the opposite of winning; it CAN be part of winning. I clarify that because losing can also become a habit. But if you use losing as a learning experience, then you can be headed for success.

In the sports world, how many times do you hear championship teams discuss how a certain loss triggered their championship run? It served as a wake-up call, an opportunity to see where they could improve. Losing helped them change their mindset. It demonstrated that in many cases, you must learn how to win. And losing provides a powerful lesson.

My advice is to embrace all results. The most important outcome is what you learned from it. Few people win all the time, but you can be better prepared to play the game and compete if you have experienced losing and learned what it takes to win.

Your goal should be to improve in areas where you have weaknesses and seek challenges that will stretch you and help you grow. A good competitor will help you point out your mistakes and weaknesses, so pay attention.

For me, sales is a competitive sport. Whenever I win or lose an account, I want to know why. Debriefing is critical. I have no problem being straightforward and asking clients for feedback. I want to know how I can improve.

If you lose an account, ask for a separate meeting within the week. Tell your prospect you respect their decision and do not want to change their mind. You just want to learn and improve. At the meeting, never be antagonistic. You are there to listen and learn.

You wouldn’t believe how many times this process helped me -- not only with my own performance, but in regaining the business when the new supplier didn’t deliver as promised.

You always want to leave your prospect on good terms. Even if you never sell to that person, you’ve made a friend by respecting their decision.

You won’t get serious about winning until you get serious about learning. It’s such a simple lesson, and one I guarantee will serve you forever. Everyone makes mistakes in the course of his or her career, and no matter how much you learn, you’re not immune.

My good friend, leadership guru John Maxwell, cautions: “A loss doesn’t turn into a lesson unless we work hard to make it so. Losing gives us an opportunity to learn, but many people do not seize it. And when they don’t, losing really hurts.”

Maxwell knows that it’s difficult to positively respond after defeat. He said it takes discipline to do the right thing when everything goes wrong. To help people learn from losses, he wrote the book, “Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn,” which provides the following road map:

Humility -- the spirit of learning.

Reality -- the foundation of learning.

Responsibility -- the first step of learning.

Improvement -- the focus of learning.

Hope -- the motivation of learning.

Teachability -- the pathway of learning.

Adversity -- the catalyst for learning.

Problems -- opportunities for learning.

Bad experiences -- the perspective for learning.

Change -- the price of learning.

Maturity -- the value of learning.

The important thing is that you learn from your losses. In the comic strip "Peanuts," Charlie Brown is walking off the baseball field with Lucy, his head down and totally dejected.

“Another ball game lost! Good grief!” Charlie says. “I get tired of losing. Everything I do, I lose!”

Lucy replies: “Look at it this way, Charlie Brown. We learn more from losing than we do from winning.”

To which Charlie replies, “That makes me the smartest person in the world!”

Mackay’s Moral: Your ability to learn from your losses is the biggest win of all.

A philosopher was sitting in the shade of a tree next to a beautiful small lake when a troubled young man approached and introduced himself: “Sir, my name is Ben, and I’m miserable all the time. I’ve been searching far and wide for a wise person who can tell me why I’m always so unhappy. Can you help me?”

The older man paused, and then asked his visitor to fill a cup with water from the lake.

Ben filled the cup. The philosopher then took a handful of salt from his bag and sprinkled it in the water. “Drink this, and tell me how it tastes,” he instructed. Ben managed only a sip and exclaimed, “That tastes terrible!”

Then the philosopher led Ben down to the lakeshore. He dropped a handful of salt into the water, waited a moment and then told Ben to drink from the lake.

“Do you taste the salt?”

“No,” Ben said, “it dissolved in the water.”

The philosopher nodded. “The pain of life is like salt. It tastes the same no matter what, but how strong it tastes depends on what we put it into. To ease your pain, learn to expand yourself. Don’t be the cup -- be the lake.”

Shaking a bad mood is important to functioning at your best. The worst thing you can do when you’re in a bad mood is wallow in it, according to Psychology Today.

Bad moods usually come from tension and low energy, according to the magazine. A short, brisk walk or some other exercise can increase your energy, reduce your stress and improve your mood. Listening to music may prompt you to remember a former good mood or good time and produce a conditioned response that makes you feel better.

Most people can manage to do one or both of those things. At least it’s a starting point.

If that’s not enough to bring about an attitude adjustment, here are some other ways to beat a bad mood. Take up a new interest. Sign up for a class in something you’ve always been interested in, but don’t know much about. Start a new hobby or get out and volunteer for a cause you care about. Getting active will help you move beyond your present mood and connect you to new people and interests.

My favorite way to lift my mood is to be around people who are happy. I love spending time with friends who are experts at seeing the silver lining in tarnished situations. One of those friends shared this marvelous story of a restaurant owner named Jerry.

Jerry is always in a good mood. When someone asks him how he’s doing, he always replies, “If I were any better, I’d be twins!”

Jerry is a natural motivator. His staff knows he will always be there for them. My friend even challenged him one day, asking how he manages to stay so positive.

His reply was classic: “Each morning, I wake up and say to myself: 'I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood, or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I always choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim, or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining, or I can point out the positive side of life. I always choose the positive side of life.”

Jerry’s philosophy was put to the test one evening when he accidentally left the back door of his restaurant unlocked. He was robbed by three armed men, who forced him to open the restaurant's safe. As he tried to open it, the robbers panicked and shot him.

The paramedics who rushed him to the hospital were encouraging, but when he saw the faces of the emergency room staff, he realized how dire his situation was. The admitting nurse asked him if he was allergic to anything. “Bullets!” Jerry told them. “I’m choosing to live! Please operate on me as if I’m alive, not dead!”

Hearing Jerry’s story puts your bad days in perspective, doesn’t it? Every day you have two choices: You can enjoy your day or you can hate it. Take charge of your attitude, and everything in life becomes much easier.

Mackay’s Moral: Don’t let your mood turn into your doom.

In 1788, Edward Gibbon set forth in his famous multi-volume work, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” his ideas about why that great civilization withered and died. Surprisingly, it involves moral decay, both societal and individual, just as much as it does political dysfunction.

While most of us have little control over the global situation, we do have some control over our personal lives, starting at home and moving on to the workplace. Studies have consistently shown that salary is not the most important factor when considering where one works -- it’s corporate culture.

Maybe this is why corporate culture is one of the hottest topics in business today. People want to work for businesses that focus on terrific employee culture.

What is corporate culture?

Corporate culture is what we call the pervasive values, beliefs and attitudes that characterize a company and guide its practices. To some extent, a company's internal culture may be articulated in its mission or vision statements. Elements of corporate culture include a company's physical environment, human resources practices and the staff itself. Corporate culture is also reflected in the degree of emphasis placed on various defining elements such as hierarchy, process, innovation, collaboration, competition, community involvement and social engagement.

It’s no surprise that Fortune’s Best Companies happen to be many of the same companies listed as the best places to work. Companies that are concentrating on culture are seeing the biggest payoffs because they are putting their employees first.

I’ve always said if you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers. And your company will thrive.

According to an article in Forbes magazine, traditional companies like Aetna are now heavily focused on culture. Last year, The New York Times published an article about Aetna's CEO, Mark Bertolini. He has raised wages, improved health benefits and introduced yoga and mindfulness training to his entire company to improve staff retention and culture in the call centers. Their $100 million-plus employee turnover problem is rapidly going away, and he claims to have already improved the bottom line by 3 to 4 percent.

Corporate culture is consistently listed as an important factor in retaining employees at every level, but perhaps most significantly, the millennial generation. In a nutshell, while making money is important, the potential to make a life that matters is even more important. In other words, no one wants to check their personal values at the company door.

Do you know your organization’s culture? Management expert Richard Hagberg on www.leader-values.com asks the question and says that many managers, particularly senior managers and the CEO, often base their views on hope rather than objective fact.

In order to ground your assessment of your workplace culture in reality, he suggests you ask these questions:

-- What 10 words would you use to describe your company?

-- Around here what’s really important?

-- Around here who gets promoted?

-- Around here what behaviors get rewarded?

-- Around here who fits in and who doesn’t?

Hagberg says the reality is that whatever management pays attention to and rewards are pretty strong indicators of the culture. Do you profess to care about quality, but is your real mentality more about “getting it out the door”? Brutally honest inquiry should be a first step to gather insight as to what your workplace culture truly is. Sometimes it’s nowhere close to what management set out to create.

Strong leadership is central to engendering a positive cultural environment. If you are in charge of a team that is not functioning properly, it’s probably your fault. You need to take a good hard look at yourself and take responsibility for the situation so that you can repair it.

Corporate culture extends far beyond employees. Your customers, vendors and competitors are watching too. Who wants to do business with an organization that can’t be trusted or respected? I’ll tell you who -- no one. Your public face reflects your internal face. The mirror doesn’t lie.

Mackay’s Moral: Your corporate culture is like a petri dish -- make sure only the good stuff grows.