Elia Saikaly – How I Made my Time-Lapse Film of Mount Everest
Monthly Archive for June, 2013
From Sport Illustrated Kids, interview to Michelle Obama, talking about the relevance to practice sport at school.
“We have a challenge. Kids are spending most of their day in school, where there is not a lot of activity on a daily basis. And they’re coming home to spend the rest of that day in front of a TV, or on an iPad, or on some kind of screen. So, that leaves very little time for movement. Schools are the best place to incorporate exercise because kids need that break in between studies to just give their minds a chance to settle. We want to make sure people understand that movement isn’t just about being a good athlete. There are a lot of kids who shy away from activity because they think, “Well, I’m not coordinated.” But the truth is that movement is pumping your arms, it’s dancing, it’s touching your toes, it’s identifying your physical strengths and not comparing yourself to your classmate, because we are all different. So we want to make activity fun again for kids in schools.”
We are a country with many trouble and once again Censis highlighted some of the main flaws:
- 31% of parents play every day at video games for more than two hours.
- Not more than 20% of Italians have the minimum skills to guide and resolve, through the appropriate use of the Italian language, complex situations and problems of everyday life.
- We are third in the world for number of interventions in aesthetic medicine and surgery in relation to population. In 2012 in Italy the interventions of aesthetic medicine increased by 24.5%. There are 900 centers for the tattoos (cost varying from 40 to 2,000 Euros each). Every week in Italy open 4 new centers specializing in tattoos.
- Growing pessimism about the future and it is expected to further ethical degradation: 55% increase for the bribes, such as tax evasion (58.6%) and the practice of accepting dubious businesses (59.8%).
- Increase the consumption of psychotropic drugs: 16.2% of anti-depressive in 6 years.
Yesterday I wrote about the necessity to redefine the success concept, here it has been has already been redefined. Rather than the wisdom of the development of new skills, they search fo a luck in the video games; the well-being is reached through the psychiatric drugs, tattoos and aesthtetic medicine/surgery; instead of the idea of return/sharing, growing passivity and helplessness to the future and ethics; the desire to wonder gives way to an impersonal lifestyle, copy of that one told through the lives of celebrity gossip.
We need a definition of success more humane and sustainable. Since too many years we are living in a society where every day we see the disastrous effects of the idea that the only thing that matters is winning. The big financial frauds and diffusion of doping in sports are here to show the pervasiveness of this mentality.
Only in these days we have the confession of a former cyclist Jan Ulrich, to be doped, the explosion of new details on the case of Schwazer and the mass protests in Brazil against the policy of the government that employs too many resources for the football World Cup and the Olympics.
They are huge issues that dominate the nations themselves but we need answers otherwise, it is not far-fetched to imagine that in a few years there will be the Olympics of doped and who fraud, in any field, will not think of making a mistake because he will be exonerate as well as Ulrich said: “I think there’s a fraud when one takes advantage unduly. I wanted to promote equal opportunities.”
The leaders always knew that they have to speak the language of emotions, and sometimes they did eliciting the most negatives and brutals. So we have to know how to support the emotions that elicit positive reactions in ourselves and in our community. In the direction to reach a new definition of success – beyond the money and the power – Arianna Huffington organized a talk about this theme, Third Metrics Conference
One of the ideas discussed was this: people want to engage in something with all your heart in order to find a meaning (Ryumon Gutierrez Baldoquin). It is not just a philosophical idea but is the basis of motivation, so each of us wants to improve thanks to its commitment. The problem is that the idea of success at all costs is destroying this basic concept, it’s time to fight it, otherwise we will have a future that is increasingly doped.
We cannot live a life with fear of failure, there is no motivation supporting this lifestyle for a long time, the result is only an increase in stress and discomfort to live. We must learn to think and speak in terms of us and not of me and them. We have to leave the logic I win and you lose, if we we will think in term of us we will leave the logic of the winner, because we have pursued the interest of the community. So let us strive to put into practice the tenets that will make us get out of this negative success vision for our community, redefining it in terms of well-being, wisdom, return, empathy and ability to amaze us.
“I love mistakes because it’s the only way you learn. You don’t learn from successes; you don’t learn from awards; you don’t learn from celebrity; you only learn from wounds and scars and mistakes and failures. And that’s the truth.” Jane Fonda
Read the book written by Niccolò Campriani “Remember to forget the fear,” the London 2012 shooting Olympic champion. First amazes his ability to talk about his life as an athlete, we will read it like a thriller with … also an happy ending. He speaks of himself as a destined for victory, that of Beijing, which, however, does not succeed, and this loss destroys him as a person and show us the way (exhausting) to achieve success. It ‘s a story that has nothing to envy to the one written by Agassi in “Open.” Its a book for all young people who want to realize themselves through sport but it’s also for coaches and managers who too often have a stereotypical idea of young athletes.
Knowing more and more tennis I am convinced this sport is one of the most devastating in terms of mental health. It is not a coincidence that the concept of “Killer Instinct” has been conceived by a tennis coach just to emphasize the need to play with the aim of annihilating the opponent. For these reasons in the staff of the best tennis schools, like that of Nick Bollettieri or Chris Evert, there are also sport psychologists who deal of mental training of the players. The reasons for this are many and can be summarized as follows:
- Tennis is a sport where at the end of each game the we win/lose one point
- Be competitive means to be able to continuously support our play regardless of the outcome
- Losing a series of points consecutively tests the ability to react to this frustration with renewed conviction towards ourselves
- We have to keep our time-playing, without wanting to immediately finish the exchange with a winning-shot
- We need to have an effective routine between a game and another that allows us to stay focused on the start of the next one.
- We need to be able to have a positive self-talk throughout the game
- We need to remember that we have to play at our best of this moment without to overdo
- We must continually put into practice the mental skills that we have trained (mental rehearsal, breathing, fighting, tactical thinking)
I am convinced that if the players will train these needs more and more athletes / and will reach the satisfaction and success to which they aspire.
Stefania Cagnotto with eighteen European medals reaches the absolute record of the
Russian Dmitri Sautin (12 gold, 4 silver, 2 bronze continental)
