How to Get Out of a Losing Streak: Expert Guidance and Tips

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Clinical psychologist William Gardner, PsyD helps explain how to change your luck for the better

Co-authored by William Gardner, PsyD and Eric McClure

Last Updated: January 7, 2026 Fact Checked

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• Fixing a Losing Streak
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• Do losing streaks really exist?
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• Types of Losing Streaks
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• Video

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Whether you’re on your 10th consecutive loss in Overwatch, struggling to hit a 3-pointer for three games in a row, or trying to get out of a slump in your love life or career, everyone runs into a losing streak now and then. Luckily, there are tried and true methods for getting out of a cold snap, and we’re here to show you how. To break down the best guidance here, we met with psychologists, life coaches, therapists, and even a spiritual teacher to see what you can do to turn your bad luck around.

The Best Ways to Break a Losing Streak

Clinical psychologist William Gardner, PsyD says that shifting your perspective is essential to getting out of a slump and seeing productive change in the future. You can do this by:

• Taking breaks to reset your headspace and give your body time to recover.
• Remembering that losing is a part of playing the game—it happens to everyone.
• Treating this as an opportunity to try something new.
• Focusing on the things you have control over and rejecting everything else.

Steps

Section 1 of 3:

How to Fix a Losing Streak

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   Take a break. This is especially important if you’re on a losing streak in a video game, or some other activity where you’re doing it repetitively for extended periods of time. Life coach Brett Baughman explains why this is so important: “I always suggest to my clients that they take a break when they’re struggling...I suggest they always pause to at least take a 20-minute break. Go someplace, walk outside, go read, meditate, just do what we call a pattern interrupt, which is where you take a moment and you change the pattern you're in.”

   • If you’re in a losing streak for something like a sport where you don’t play every day, consider taking a vacation or skipping the next game. A break is a great way to reset physically, too!
   • Even if you’re in a slump with your love life, you can take a break from dating. Some alone time can really help reset your game, even if it’s just a week or two.

   Meet the wikiHow Experts

   William Gardner, PsyD is a clinical psychologist with over a decade of experience helping adults improve themselves and change key behaviors.

   Rachel Clissold is a life coach and consultant who specializes in helping business leaders overcome internal roadblocks and improve performance.

   Melanie Sheree is a spiritual teacher who helps clients cultivate a stronger awareness of themselves and the world around them.

   Brett Baughman is a business and life coach with 20 years of experience helping entrepreneurs and executives achieve success.

   Kim Chronister, PsyD is a licensed clinical psychologist who supports patients and helps them overcome challenges.
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   Change your perspective on losing. Clinical psychologist Kim Chronister, PsyD says, “It’s critical to remember that most of the successful CEOs, actors, and professional athletes have experienced more losses than wins.” She encourages radical acceptance here—acknowledge that you’ve lost a lot, remember everybody loses, and remind yourself that this is all just a part of growing and improving yourself.

   • Consider a losing streak in your career. Imagine you’re 0 for 5 in your last five interviews. You could look at all of this as wasted time and get bummed out about it, or, you could treat these five interviews as practice. You’re just honing your skills before the next interview!
   • Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, was famous for embracing losses as a good thing: “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
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   Treat it as an opportunity to try a new strategy. Certified life coach Rachel Clissold explains: “If we're doing things in a certain way, in a certain pattern, we're always going to get a certain result.” So, if you’re doing things the way you normally do and you just keep losing, she says, “Why not try a different way? Why not?... You might surprise yourself, right?”

   • Say you’re a basketball player in a huge slump. You normally butter your bread using your quick release and accurate aim from the 3-point line. A losing streak is the perfect time to try to mix it up. Drive to the basket more often, pass more often, do something different and see if it helps!
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   Stay positive. Dr. Gardner says that "when you dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives,” nobody benefits. He gives an example: “Say I had a flat tire. What else happened? Well, I had a nice lunch, and I got a promotion. All right, then why dwell on that negative?" If it doesn’t benefit you, why engage in the behavior?

   • Say you’re hitting a losing streak in the dating game—the last four people you asked out all said no. Well, if you focus on the negative, you’re probably going to appear bummed and dejected the next time you take a shot and ask someone out, while staying upbeat will help you convey the relaxed confidence you might need to impress that person and get the date!
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   Focus on you and things you can control. If you’re always worried about the other team, you’re going to lose track of yourself. The only person in charge of your performance is you, so that’s where your focus should be. If you lose despite your best effort, so be it—there was nothing you could do anyway. As spiritual teacher Melanie Sheree puts it, “As soon as you have identified yourself as somebody who's not lucky, you're going to continue to experience that same thing... You have to really become conscious that you've taken that on and decide that that's not what you want anymore.”

   • Say you’re playing Call of Duty or League of Legends, and one of your teammates just randomly decides to start trolling and throwing the game. You can either pay attention to their awfulness and get irritated, or ignore them and just focus on yourself. One of those things might help you win, and it’s not the first one!
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   Accept your losses as part of the process. The only way to end a losing streak is to keep losing until a win appears. So, lean into it. Clissold explains, “Luck ain't got anything to do with it … so when challenges arise, you change course, right? It's just learning to move with the momentum rather than fight against it.” In other words, you have to lose sometimes. Might as well lean into the losses, accept them, and wait until things change.

   • Random chance means that sometimes stuff won’t go your way, but it won’t be that way forever. You’re much more likely to end a losing streak early by accepting it, not letting it irritate you, and continuing to do your best.
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   Shift your attention to the little wins. Licensed marriage & family therapist Anna Elton, PhD, LMFT says, “You need to make sure that you pause and celebrate small successes, because we usually, you know, do something, achieve our goals, we keep moving, and then we forget to pause and give ourselves grace.” Don’t lose yourself in your own ambition. You aren’t losing in everything, so celebrate yourself and the things you’re doing right.

   • Say you’re a baseball player in a hitting slump—you’ve gone 10 games without a hit. Is your team winning at all? How have you played on defense? How many games have you gone without an error? You’re doing something right, and you should acknowledge that.
   • Even if your losing streak is that bad, you aren’t in a losing streak everywhere in life. Okay, so you’re losing a lot in a video game. Are you in a rewarding relationship? Do you have friends? Is your career going well? A losing streak in one area isn’t a reason to get down about life.
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   Learn from your losses. Clissold says that keeping your eyes on your goal and accepting yourself will make it easier to grow. Take a mental inventory of what went wrong and see if there’s anything you might be able to change going forward. If you have game tape, even better! Review the film to see if there’s anything you might be able to practice to improve in the future.

   • For example, if you’re a pitcher, note which pitches you were getting rocked on. Are you telegraphing your curveball? Do you need to work more on painting the corners? There’s always some area to improve!
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Section 2 of 3:

Do losing streaks really exist?

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1. 
   Sure, but they’re only a product of statistical chance. Unless there’s something causing you to struggle on a structural level (like you’re in a league with a much different skill gap), losing streaks are just the consequence of random chance. For example, if you flip a coin an infinite number of times, there will eventually be a period where it comes up tails 100 times in a row.

   • This doesn’t mean losing streaks aren’t real in the sense that they can’t impact you. Beliefs are powerful, and if you think you’re in a losing streak, no amount of data or logic will help pull you out of that feeling, and that’s okay!

Section 3 of 3:

Types of Losing Streaks

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1. 
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   The random run This is the most common type of losing streak—the losing streak of random chance. Sometimes you’re going to run into a string of losses, and there’s just nothing you can do to change that. Don’t take these kinds of losing streaks as anything more than they are: bad luck.

   • Joe Louis, one of the greatest boxers of all time, once had three straight career knockout losses. In fact, they were the only losses of his career. He’d eventually retire with 66 wins and 3 losses. Sometimes all the bad luck comes all at once—even if you’re one of the greatest boxers of all time!
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   The slump A slump occurs when you go on a losing streak due to a lack of motivation or a feeling of complacency. It’s common to experience a slump every now and then if you’ve been engaging in any kind of repetitive behavior, so this is where taking a break really shines as a solution.

   • Hall of Fame baseball player Mickey Mantle once had a historic slump. After winning MVP three times, his batting average fell to a dismal .237, and he struck out a record of 120 times. He admitted he was just spent, famously saying, “You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.”
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   The tilt Tilts occur when you get so upset by your own losses that you end up losing more as a result of your inability to focus and calm your nerves. These losing streaks are all about getting out of your own way, calming down, and refreshing yourself. Breaks can help too!

   • At the 2013 French Open, Novak Djokovic was beating Rafael Nadal 4-3. Then, he had a slip-up. He accidentally ran into the net and was penalized, which caused him to tilt hard. He got into an argument with the ref, proceeded to slam his racket, and played emotionally the rest of the game. He’d end up losing the match.
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   The structural streak Structural streaks are not pure chance. They’re losing streaks where something is fundamentally mismatched and causing you to lose over and over again. There are different kinds of structural streaks, but most of them boil down to picking the wrong opponent or tackling tasks you think you’re able to do, but actually aren’t.

   • From 2003-2015, the Buffalo Bills lost 15 straight games against the Patriots. The problem? The Patriots had the greatest quarterback in the history of the sport, while the Bills had…let’s say a below-average roster on defense for years in a row. This one wasn’t really bad luck, this was just the Bills and Pats being unevenly matched.
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