Why sports is important?

I have loved sports ever since my early childhood. Truth being said, little did I know what will be the influence of sports in my daily life. I'm not a professional sportsperson/athlete either. But as I grew up and learned more about this complex process we call “life”, I also realized the beneficial effects of being an active sportsperson.

Failure 

This is the single most important preaching sports can provide you with. It teaches you how to deal with failure. The however perfect one is, a person will have to face failure in his life someday or other. The weak, we say, succumb to failure and collapse. In sports, you either win or lose. 

I won't be surprised if some researcher found that the same set of neurotransmitters are released during a major calamity in life, and while facing a loss in any game. A game can be imagined as a miniature form of life albeit a part of life if not whole. The brain is an amazing organ that can adapt and come out better in a bitter situation if it has prior experience of such exposure. 

Personally, I handle failure much better because I correlate it with a loss in a sports game, and hence I know that this failure is not permanent. I know life will give me another game to prove my worth and that day I will come out of it as a winner!

Trust 

Trust let's face it. We all need to believe in fellow humans to be out there for our support at some point in life. Trust issues, given the complexity of emotions, are bound to unmask themselves in several instances. The sports which involve teamwork teach you this wonderful skill, if I call it, to trust your teammate. A team sports activity cannot be won single-handedly. In a game of football, if the striker scores 10 goals, but you don't have a goalkeeper to defend opposition goals, the team may end up losing with a score of 10–50.

Who knows. 

Once you master your game, you also get a sense as to which player will be able to fulfill what role and you become a part of a selection panel. This is extremely similar to hiring talented individuals for your team at work. A candidate may be exceptional in academics but may not be the right fit for the job at hand. If Sachin Tendulkar were given a task to play volleyball, he wouldn't have become the God at that game. He was a perfect fit for cricket and hence is the master blaster famously known as the God of cricket.

Time management

Time management - the best of us at times claim that “I couldn't find time to look at that yesterday”. Many games are time-bound and teach us time management skills. The game of football, hockey, handball, basketball, etc are all measured in minutes of play and the team which scores more goals will win the game. 

We have an assignment that needs to be completed within a time limit. A sports environment can give the brain this exposure to accomplishing something within a given time limit and enhance our time management skills. Read More About the Importance of Time

Focus 

Focus - while some games as I mentioned above are time-bound, others are target-bound. The games like archery (where you get a fixed number of shots to aim), formula1 (fixed number of laps), tennis (points and sets), cricket (number of overs), etc are target bound. These games help us stay focused on the goal, break it into smaller goals, and archive those as mini targets before we eventually reach our target.

Such is life. You set yourself realistic goals that can be achieved as milestones before the ultimate goal of your life. That goal - “to each his own”.

Rules

Rules - yet another amazing skill one can gain from sports is the ability to “stick to the rules”. In life, we have rules which one is not encouraged to break, for example, traffic rules. But notorious brain tends to do exactly what is instructed to it not to be done.

Sport has even greater advantages for children. Start them young if you want them to live a long and stable life.

Children learn vital skills when they play sport, particularly in a team for a club.

"It comes down to working as a team, accepting decisions, and understanding that people have different abilities.

"Kids learn that things aren't going to go their way all the time, and that they need to respect their peers as well as referees and sports officials.

"Society puts a lot of pressure on kids to be more academic but there is evidence to suggest that physical activity might increase numeracy and literacy.

 

"It's like that old adage, 'a healthy body, a healthy mind'."