Sports in My Life, Essay Example

The impact of sports on my life has been very powerful.  Many people might have a hard time understanding how dedication to athletics can be one of the most important aspects of life. For me, the combination of self-reliance and team-effort has made it much easier to go through the various trials and tribulations of life. I have learned how to respect others while also pursuing my own ambitions and goals. I have learned how to without being full of myself and how to lose without becoming angry or sad. These things may seem trivial in comparison to other life-lessons such as those that have to do with earning a living or raising children. However, the experiences I have had in sports have made me a stronger and more confident person. Because playing a sport often involves overcoming adversities such as stiff competition or injury, I believe my life in sports not only shows that I have faced challenges and bested them, but that in doing so I’ve learned knowledge and processes that could help others face the challenges in their lives.

The best way for me to share my experiences and knowledge that have been gained from playing sports is to describe the process of how to overcome a serious physical injury. As an athlete, no other obstacle can be considered more difficult or important than how the athlete deals with physical injury. While there are many ways to deal with a mental setback, such as a loss or a “slump,” the situation is much more complicatedwhen you are dealing with a physical injury. This is due to the fact that physical injuries also involve mental challenges that must be dealt with at the same time that the body is recovering. The mental challenges of an injury spring form the fact that when a player is seriously injured he or she must also deal with a potential loss of confidence in relation to the sport they play. For example, if a baseball player is hit with a fastball and is injured badly enough that he or she must leave the game, the player must deal not only with a physical wound, but with the completely logical fear they may have when they next face a fastball in a game. It is perfectly natural for a person to want to avoid any place or situation that has previously caused them injury. In order to continue as an athlete, one must overcome this perfectly natural anxiety. This is why love for sports can be a powerful motivator.

Before I explain my own personal experience with injury and the process that I used to overcome the setbacks associated with injury, bot mental and physical, it is important that I briefly describe my history with sports. This is an important part of the recovery from injury process in two ways. First, a long-standing love for sports enabled my body to be in good condition to that recovering from a serious injury would be as easy as possible. Second, my passion and enthusiasm for sports made it much easier for me to deal with the mental challenges associated with a loss of confidence or an obstacle of fear. This is because I started with athletics at a very early age and therefore had already had many experiences with feeling anxiety or even fear in relation to playing and being the best athlete that I could be.

My own participation in team sports began when I was four years old. My sport was soccer. I was a very good soccer player and twice finished the season as my team’s highest scorer. Additionally, teams that I played on won the school championship in four different seasons. My first challenge in sports had to do with my age. I began playing on the Junior varsity team when I was still one year younger than the rest of the players on the team.So many of the older players did not like the fact a younger guy came and played with them very well as they all believed that only they should play on the team as they were the bigger boys. During this period, I continued to hone my skills and I took the attitude of the other players as an inspiration to excel and make myself into a better athlete. However difficult this challenge was, it was less of a hurdle than facing a serious injury, but dealing with it helped lay the ground for my ability to recover from a serious injury.

My process for overcoming injury is therefore a process that can be used for other setbacks and challenges in life. The process begins, as I have just describes, with an early and enthusiastic commitment to the sport. So, in order to overcome any kind of adversity, the first step is to put yourself in contact with your life experiences that have helped you face challenges previously. My personal story of how to overcome a serious physical injury begins when I broke my arm only three days prior to an important semifinal game. A person who did not have a long experience as a team player might have simply sat out the semifinal game, feeling inadequate because of their injury. In my case, having a long commitment to the sport of soccer and the team I played for, allowed me to rise above the injury.

The next step in the process of how to overcome an injury in sports is to seek out good medical attention for the injury and determine exactly what the risk in continuing to play while injured is. No matter how much you want to support your team, it is only foolish to do anything that might result in permanent injury. In this regard, I visited a doctor and asked them to put a light cast on my arm so that could still play in the semifinals. The doctors were able to do this for me, so I had full confidence that I was physically fit to [play in the game. This is very important because it influenced my mental and emotional attitude. With the light cast, I still felt protected, but not “weighed down” or otherwise awkward. I also felt that I had taken strongenough precautions that I could still give one-hundred percent out on the field.

The third step in the process, after finding the motivation to go on playing, and making my body safe, was to overcome the actual physical limitation that was put on me because of the cast. Luckily, the limitations that were caused by the cast were minimal due to the fact that soccer rarely involves using the hands. I realized that all the feeling that I had about being “weird” or uncomfortable on the field were actually mental obstacles rather than physical obstacles. While a physical challenge needs a physical solution, a mental challenge, even one based on physical things, requires a mental solution. Therefore, the thing that I needed to do in order to overcome the oddness of wearing a cast on my arm while playing soccer was to develop a mental technique for playing as freely as if I was not wearing a cast. To do this, I practiced visualizing that the cast was a part of my body and not an artificial constraint.

The next step in the process of overcoming a serious injury in sports was to practice playing through the injury. This requires keeping a careful balance between playing at full capability and protecting your body from further injury. When I practiced playing in the cast, I reconfigured my playing style to minimize the use of my injured arm. This process was actually much easier than I had expected. It required only preventing me from being skittish or over compensating with the other (good) side of my body. I had to be aware of the other players on the field in such a way as to not accidentally smash my hurt arm into someone. This actually resulted in my becoming a stronger player because it widened my vision and awareness on the field. Of course, everyone has heard stories about the way that blind people or deaf people develop their remaining senses to a higher level as a way to balance out the loss they have in another area. This is similar to the way that I learned to use my body while playing in a cast.

While I have addressed several steps in the process of how to play through and injury as an athlete, one extremely important step in the process remains and that is the step of overcoming potential emotional barriers that are associated with the injury. Emotional challenges are different than physical or mental challenges and are sometimes far more difficult to grapple with. For example, I had several emotions going through me due to my broken arm. The most powerful emotion was extreme disappointment. I was worried that all of my hard work and practice would be for nothing because I would miss playing in the semifinal game. Another emotion I experienced was anger. Finally, a more hidden, but no less powerful, emotion that I experienced was shame. I was actually embarrassed that I had injured myself so badly. It seemed as though the injury was a sign that I was not a very good player or that I had somehow brought the injury on myself through a lack of skill.

As strange as it may sound, I discovered that the best way to deal with these kinds of emotional challenges was to meet them with mental solutions. That is to say, I simply applied the use of logic to my emotions and examined them in a rational light. This is what some people call “detachment” and I think this is the most important step in the process of overcoming an injury in sports. For example, when I rationally examined my disappointment, I found a ready answer which was: keep trying to play despite the injury. When I looked at my anger, I realized that there was no-one to actually be mad at, so the anger was pointless and unproductive. When I examined my sense of shame rationally, I realized that athletes of all abilities and accomplishment suffer injuries. What makes someone a good athlete is bouncing back from injury.

The process I have described about how to deal with a serious injury in sports is one that can also be applied to other kinds of challenges. By separating the physical, mental, and emotional levels of a challenge, it is easier to grapple with it. By remaining grounded in past confidence and personal ambition it is easier to overcome any type of obstacle. By combining all of the elements that I have mentioned above, it is likely that any type of challenge or hardship can be mad less difficult, if not speedily overcome. In my case, the process resulted in our team winning the championship and my personal ability for soccer getting much stronger