Has sport at the Olympic level lost its essence and morphed into an athlete becoming the symbol of a sport vs the participant in sport?\u00a0\u00a0 When that line is crossed, lessons no longer have meaning, and the athlete now represents more than her or himself.\u00a0 As a symbol, the athlete now represents agents, corporations, governing bodies, marketing firms, and sponsors AND all THEIR agendas.\u00a0 That is a dangerous place to be.<\/p>\n
I always thought that the essence of sport is for us to find our ourselves.\u00a0 To learn how to perfect a skill.\u00a0 To learn how to exercise mind control.\u00a0 To accept the ups and downs that mirror real life. \u00a0To learn to overcome setbacks and to accept victory in a humble way.<\/p>\n
I always thought that the essence of sport is to set goals and learn how to achieve them no matter how high or hard or how long it takes to accomplish.<\/p>\n
I always thought that the essence of sport is to find your demon, confront it and defeat it. To learn how to overcome mental blocks and debilitating defeats.\u00a0 To teach us about ourselves and to carry those lessons into real life.<\/p>\n
One of the greatest lessons that sport teaches us is how to learn to control our mind in the most pressure packed moments and to learn from it.\u00a0 To take those lessons into real life so you can deal with real issues like divorce, family death, job loss, illness, and financial disaster.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t win in sport as you much as you win in life.<\/p>\n
But when the platform of Olympic sports is no longer a sport but a profession or job, it loses its essence and moves onto an entirely different platform.\u00a0\u00a0 This is the precipice where we find ourselves today.<\/p>\n
It is the sports\u2019 governing bodies, staff and coaches that need to put safeguards in place to focus on the performance and not the outcome. To prevent mental health issues by presenting mental growth as a healthy result of participation and mindfulness.<\/p>\n
We must not lose the essence of sport and no athlete should ever become a symbol of the sport. \u00a0That stops the learning progression and places an unfair burden on the individual and thus lays the groundwork for real mental health issues.<\/p>\n
The essence of sport is to improve mental health and not to break it down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Has sport at the Olympic level lost its essence and morphed into an athlete becoming the symbol of a sport vs the participant in sport?\u00a0\u00a0 When that line is crossed,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":483821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,17],"tags":[34385,129083,57064],"class_list":["post-483822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-commentary","tag-2020-tokyo-olympic-games","tag-essence-of-sport","tag-mental-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n