Читать книгу Sports Psychology For Dummies - Leif H. Smith - Страница 86

If your life is out of balance, your motivation levels will be drained.

You aren’t just an athlete — you’re a person. And you have other aspects of your life that can be stressful, in addition to sports. When your emotional and physical energy resources are being drained by other things in your life outside of sports (like relationships, school, or financial difficulties), you won’t have enough energy for your athletic training. When you’re being pulled in many different directions, especially in a day and age where athletic competition is extremely demanding, your motivation can drop — not because you don’t love your sport, but because you have a finite amount of energy.

To keep your motivation going strong when you have lots of outside commitments requiring your time and attention:

 Make sure to take care of the physical basics: sleep and nutrition. Stress drains energy, including motivation, and you need to replenish your body and mind often.

 Build strong coping skills. There are always going to be stressors in your life, but the most important thing is to have the tools to cope with them. The more tools you have, the less energy drain will occur and the less impact on your motivation level. We discuss mental health issues in Chapter 13. You can use the various skills we cover in this book (imagery, confidence building, goal setting, focus, bouncing back from mistakes, and so on) to cope better with life off the playing field as well. Don’t limit their use to sports alone.

 Talk to a sports psychologist about the reasons why your life is out of balance. They can help you get it back.

 Focus on task management. Your life may be out of balance because you’re overextended and not managing your time and priorities well. If you can get a handle on your schedule, you can prevent decreases in motivation that come with feeling overwhelmed. (For more on task management, turn to Chapter 9.)