Capture The Moment

Recently, I have been reading several articles about why our youth want to participate in sports. In everyone of them, the articles cited various polls that had been taken, and in each poll the same reason came in at number one. The main reason young people want to play and participate in any sport is to simply have fun.

That got me thinking. Not only about young athletes but any athlete. What is it about sports that draws us in? What is it about any particular sport that compels a ten year old girl on a soccer team or a thirty year old professional baseball player to want to play?

I would like to propose that any of us who sign up to play are doing it because we want to or are at least hoping to have fun. The challenge for all of us who are athletes is to make sure that whether we just signed up to learn a new sport or have been playing for fifteen years is that we are still having fun. And for the athletes who are no longer having fun, and enjoying the sports experience, maybe they need to re-evaluate or reconsider why they are still playing. 

So, what does it mean to have fun? It's about finding and embracing that moment when you are fully engaged in what is happening, are feeling a sense of enjoyment and excitement about what is happening, and believe that you have achieved or accomplished something that has personal meaning to you. Putting it all together, there is a strong inner sense of empowerment and elevation. You are on top of the world and nothing can bring you down.

Over time, I think that a lot of athletes have lost the "capacity" to have fun. It's now become about the expectations of others, worrying about being better than the next athlete, wanting to be popular, drowning in a desire to just win no matter what or afraid of stopping because you have already invested so much time, energy and money. And because they don't know how to recapture that feeling of having fun, many of them are mentally and emotionally running on empty.

My hope is that coaches, parents and athletes who serve as mentors, can help athletes learn how to have fun. And one approach to doing this is by teaching them how to "capture the moment". This moment can take place in a practice, playing in a game or even at a team meeting. 

An athlete can capture the moment when he or she takes the following steps:

 Be mentally present to the moment you are in

 Find one thing in that moment that you are grateful for

 Identify your personal strengths that you brought into the moment

  Ask yourself what you can learn by being in that moment

Congratulate yourself for playing in that moment 

  No matter what happens in the moment, say "thank you"

Discover how that moment made you a better athlete and person

By taking these steps, the moment becomes very meaningful to the athlete and thereby is transformed into an extraordinary experience that he or she will want to hold onto for a long time.  

PS. Still have a lot of other thoughts and ideas about this topic. Will continue writing about this in future posts.