Reconciling work and sports – How do we become more resilient?
Stress is omnipresent in our society and so are tips and tricks to become more resilient. In the end, everyone has to find out for themselves what actually helps. One group of people from whom you can learn a lot are athletes. Our colleague Sina John plays lacrosse for the German national team and is currently preparing for the world championships. She offers some exciting tips on how to become more stress-resilient.
Whether you're a professional or an amateur athlete, stress is part of life. Not only physical stress, which causes muscles to grow. After a certain level of success, it is also immense psychological stress that comes along with it.
For professionals, it is the competitions in front of thousands of spectators, the expectations of fans, reports in the media and their own livelihood, which depends on success on the sports field. For amateurs, it's their own demands, but also the compatibility of sport, job, family and private life. In addition, there are often financial worries and a lack of medical support. With the first major injury at the latest, both groups ask themselves "What am I doing this for?"
In order to keep going and be successful anyway, stress resilience is enormously important. And it's something you can train. Here are a few tricks that can be applied outside of sports.
What's your stressor?
First things first: stress is different for every person. While for some, a deadline to hand in only brings the right incentive, others panic to break it and don't even know how to start because of stress. And that's perfectly okay. Stress is individual, as are the strategies to deal with it. To become more resilient, each:r should know what stresses him or her and recognize the signs early.
Body Control
Stress affects our bodies, whether physical or mental stress. Stage fright is accompanied by sweaty palms, stress before a delivery by sleepless nights, excitement before a competition by loss of appetite. As classical escape animals humans get then also still breath acceleration and a faster heartbeat. The easiest way to outsmart your own body is to breathe. No matter if you simply breathe in and out evenly or use certain breathing techniques or meditate directly, regaining control over your own body starts in the lungs.
Mental Work
Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson writes in his biography, "If you focus on you, you grow. If you focus on shit, shit grows." And that describes it aptly. Because if you focus only on what could go wrong, you will also fail crashingly. To overcome this negative cycle in sports, or even in everyday life, you have to start thinking positively. Many successful athletes go into themselves after a bad serve or a missed opportunity, and go over what it would look like if they did it right. In lacrosse, for example, "catch, save, then play on or shoot."
Focus
Mental work is followed by focus. And that is on the doable and the positive. Athletes around the world go into arenas and have to deal with fans, opposing teams, referees and more. But to do their job, they also have to learn to tune out everything they can't control. After all, a bad refereeing decision won't suddenly change because of excitement, and opposing fans don't get quieter when they're being watched.
Whether it's stress in sports or in everyday life, it always happens. Recognizing and managing it is therefore important. At Piabo, we offer our employees the opportunity to talk about their mental health with external professionals. Take a look at our job offers. We also support employees in their passions outside of work, such as Sina in her lacrosse career. If you feel addressed, check out our job opportunities and get in touch with us!
© Florian Petrow / Madsack Mediengruppe
