Monthly Archive for August, 2022

Wilma Rudolph (athletics) – I loved the feeling of freedom in running, the fresh air, the feeling that the only person I was competing with was me.

Sebastian Coe (athletics) – All records are only on loan.

Steve Prefontaine (athletics) – To give anything less than the most is to sacrifice a gift.

Wilma Rudolph (athletics) – My mother taught me early on to believe I could achieve anything. The first was to walk around without bracelets.

Michael Phelps (swimming) . The more you dream, the farther you go.

Abele Bikila (marathon runner) – I run barefoot to better hear what the road whispers to me.

Emil Zatopek (athletics) I almost never laugh because I am not talented enough to toil and laugh at the same time.

Haile Gebrselassie (athletics) –  I keep running because stopping and accepting that a career is over is harder than moving on.

Edwin Moses (athletics) – A running athlete is a moving sculpture.

Dick Fosbury (athletics) –  When you reach the highest level, 90 percent is mental effort, 10 percent is physical.

Haile Gebrselassie (athletics) -  I always listened to my coaches. But before the coaches, I listened to my body.

Commitment is the basis of any improvement; without commitment none of the three main motivations that characterize human beings could ever be fulfilled. These manifest themselves in the need for stimulation, competence and belonging and play a primary role in sustaining skill development.

Every performance requires some degree of activation that sustains and nurtures personal interest in completing it. Fortunately, simple and repetitive performances can be carried out effectively even with minimal use of personal energy. In contrast, activities involving, accuracy, speed of decision-making, and the guidance of others, to be carried out effectively, require an interest of the person involved that is commensurate with their importance. Therefore, one of the factors that determines in ourselves the perception that we are acting effectively depends on feeling interest and passion in the performance of the activity.

Interest alone would not be sufficient if it were not accompanied by technical and tactical competence. As much as there are always different challenges during a career, the perception of competence is based on the results of past actions. Having successfully coped with new situations allows one to perceive oneself convinced that one has the necessary tools to do well in the next one as well. In fact, every athlete bases this awareness on past results, thinking, “Again, this time, if I train as I did when I got my best results, I will put myself in the optimal condition to express myself to the best of my ability and achieve the desired result.”

There is, therefore, a positive correlation between training performed/competencies manifested in the past/achieved results and current training/belief of feeling ready today/future results.

The third need to be met is that of belonging; in fact, of a person who is no longer included in his or her social environment we are used to say that he or she “has been uprooted from it,” and by this statement we mean to highlight a current condition of greater difficulty and greater social isolation. To achieve ambitious goals one must, on the contrary, feel part of a group that is leading a common effort. We know that profit alone cannot create group cohesion, otherwise billionaire soccer teams would be crystal-clear examples of unity of purpose. It is equally true that taking the best and making them work together is not enough either; a team of only champions is not automatically the champion team. Instead, we need to develop a sense of belonging, to think in terms of We and not just Me. “If We strive together we will succeed” must be the daily message that leading managers must convey through their decisions and actions to their employees.

If we start from the premise that “life is a wonderful thing but it could also turn into hell if one is not careful,” then it quickly becomes clear why stress, in turn, can be equally wonderful or fatal. It is the difficult situations that drive people to work hard to overcome them and achieve the results they set out to achieve. Let’s think about the first date with a girl or a guy, how I felt, was he/she quiet, no for sure. Was one thinking will he come or won’t she come, will I be clumsy? It is only by putting yourself in that stressful situation that you were able to experience that feeling of uncertainty and then pleasure.

It is from challenges that the response or positive stress arises. By challenges one should not only mean the extreme ones of Olympic champions or those related to one’s professional accomplishment, both of which require long-term work to acquire and continuously improve skills.

Challenge is also more than that. Even seemingly simple challenges, such as finding time during the week to do something you enjoy (a walk, meeting with friends). In this case, the challenge is to do something you enjoy, for the sake of doing it, to achieve immediate goals, to feel pleasure or to have fun. In this sense, leisure outside of work is one of the best predictors of well-being, and enjoyment positively influences couple relationships and social life, which are also key indices of well-being.

What it’s proposed, then, it’s to develop an active lifestyle, synonymous with a life not only crushed by professional and family duties but in which there is room for activities that promote pleasure and satisfaction. It is an invitation to people to prefer experiences to passivity brought about by comforts (“Why should I go out, toil, when I can be so comfortable on the couch and be on social”), to do rather than to have (“But if I buy myself that electronic devise that makes me lose weight while sitting, why should I go on a diet and go to the gym?”).

These ideas are not new!!! Benjamin Franklin, an 18th-century scientist and politician, argued that teaching a young man to shave and keep his razor sharp would contribute far more to his happiness than giving him 1,000 guineas to squander. Money would have left only remorse. Whereas knowing how to shave frees a man from the barber’s harassment, his sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths and unsharp razors.