Lessons Learned: Top Ten life skills gained from playing sports
By MATEO ESPARZA
The Tower
From the outside looking in, sports are just playing professionally and playing the game, but this is completely wrong. Sports show you several lessons that you keep for your whole life and use every day. Such as how to communicate with others, overcoming adversity, and mental strength. Inspiresports.com says “While sports are, and should be, a means of staying fit, having fun, and forming friendships, a recreational endeavour, they also have a plethora of advantages when it comes to instilling skills that will prove essential in their education, employment, and daily life.”
This is the Top 10 Life skills from playing sports.
10. Staying in Shape
When an athlete goes to practice every day, the athlete stays in shape. The running and thinking that an athlete does for your hour and a half practice will keep your health stable. This is one of the main reasons why some people play sports, however, there are several other reasons.
9. You Get What You Put In
In sports, you learn that nothing will be given to you, and you must work for it. If you don’t do your training out of practice, you won’t overcome anyone else on your team or opponent. If you don’t work on your profession or chase your dreams, they won’t come to you without working for it.
8. How to Win
In sports, you win, and you lose it is a part of the game. Although, when you win you must keep composure and keep working. This is at eight because it is important to know how to win but there are other benefits that are more important to your lives and how you use them to be successful.
7. Mental Strength
To play sports you must need mental strength to have confidence playing your sport and get through your mistakes. If you play without confidence and mental believing you will succeed, then you won’t play to your full potential. Same in life, its important to believe in what you do because your mentality is everything.
6. Competitiveness
In life you will always have a competitor. It may be an opponent in sports, a coworker, and sometimes yourself. Sports helps grow your competitiveness and the desire to beat your opponent. Playing sports shows you that competitive nature between you and the person trying to overcome you. Life may not seem as competitive as a person thinks but you are always competing in your job and other things in life.
5. Friends and Community
When playing sports, you join a community of people that all shoot for the same goal. You build friends and relationships through the sport you play. These friends stay in your life even put of sports and help you in life. It also helps to find friends and relate to people.
4. Communicate with Others
On the pitch, field, or court, you play with lots of other teammates, and you must communicate with them to succeed. If you don’t communicate with each other than you wont work as a team and reach the goal you want. Same in life with your coworkers or family you must need to know how to communicate and solve problems with each other. Inspiresports.com states “Even if you are naturally someone who is happy with your own company or more introverted, there are times when you will need to collaborate. Sport encourages the development of this skill set.”
3. Staying Determined and Working Hard
Staying determined is one of the most important things you learn in sports. Dedication to your sport, going to every practice, watching film, trainings on your own time. All of these show a person how to work hard for what they want and how practice makes perfect. This makes a person work hard for their dream job or whatever they want to do in their life.
2. How to Lose
Nothing in life is perfect and you learn this first in life. No one wins every single game with mistakes. What makes a good person and good athlete is they know how to lose. Losin is not the end but the start of something new. It shows a person not to give up when you don’t get that job you wanted but keep working for it.
1. Overcoming Adversity
This is the greatest skill that an athlete learns in sports. In life a person endures a lot of obstacles and things in their way and they must overcome those to keep going. If its an injury, a tough loss, or any other setback the athlete must bounce back and jump past the obstacle and keep moving forward. In life it can be a little jump or a great leap to get through it. Such as losing a job, a lost loved one, embarrassment, failure, and several other setbacks. These things Can lead to someone giving up and hiding or opening up and trying again and again until they succeed. This is what makes a successful person, athlete, and being in life. Some obstacle may be unable to jump over so a person must have a good attiutude. In sports you must stay confident and not let the adversity you are facing get to your mental strength.
Onlinesportmanagement.com reports “Leaders in sport have to strike a delicate balance. They’re called upon to maintain clear vision while remaining open to new ideas; follow a strict work ethic while being able to adapt; demonstrate grace in victory and in defeat (while teaching the value of both); hold high expectations without being cruel; and persevere through difficulty without losing perspective. This kind of resilience—this strength combined with flexibility—is a hallmark not just of leaders in any field, but of mature adults and top-quality professionals.”
All of these life skills build a mature adult and help them be very successful in anything they do. If an individual leaners how to overcome adversity nothing will stop them from chasing what they want to do in life. These skills are important in the work industry, at home, in the streets, and in sports and competitive games.