psychology

Resilience and Success

Article by Giuseppe Mingrone

When an athlete has all the features to go ahead and not break through, what does it depend on? Many "sit", become demotivated. One of the determinants can be resilience, that is the ability to face obstacles.

Being motivated is not an exceptional condition, it is a normal condition.

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"Our greatest fear is not to be inadequate, our greatest fear is to be powerful beyond all measure, it is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

Acting as a little man does not help the world, there is nothing enlightening about closing oneself in oneself so that the people around us will feel insecure. We are born to make manifest the glory that is within us, it is not only in some of us it is in all of us; if we let our light shine unconsciously we give other people permission to do the same, as soon as we free ourselves from our fear, our presence automatically frees others "

The term resilience is born in the engineering field, where it is used to denote the ability of a metal to withstand a pressure.

This term was transferred to the human sciences thirty years ago by French authors.

Resilience is part of the motivational field, it is a quality of motivation.

The quality of motivation makes the difference between those who stop and those who continue, those who fail and those who achieve the objectives.

Those who have experienced terrible experiences (sexual violence, loss of parents, etc.), and are able to metabolize what happened, usually accomplish exceptional deeds.

We can define resilience as:

ability to stay motivated in the face of obstacles and difficulties encountered in pursuit of a goal.

There are athletes who, despite injuries, stalls and disagreements with their team, manage to move forward. The ability to deal with these factors is crucial

"Success is the ability to go from failure to success without losing enthusiasm" - Winston Churchill

Don't motivate, but assist

Incentive and compulsion are extrinsic motivational factors; these models have big limitations: they have a limited duration in time, the person concerned does not undertake to reach the goal, but to reach the motivation.

The human brain is able to self-motivate itself and does not need to resort to external motivational sources. Man is the animal with the most powerful motivation that exists.

True motivation is intrinsic and is generated by pleasure and fun. Commitment creates a sense of competence and is rewarded with pleasure and enjoyment.

A good trainer should perceive the needs of his client - rarely the external client immediately what he really wants - after a few minutes of conversation in the first meeting.

Sensory stimuli for interaction with the environment

Have you ever enjoyed the rain that gets wet during a swim in the sea or in your jogging session?

Motorcyclists often run with the helmet visor open to better hear the wind in your face and the roar of the engine. Have you ever wondered why?

Experiments on sensory deprivation (//it.wikipedia.org).

When the subjects of the studies were placed in tanks of sensory deprivation - soundproofed, lack of light, water at the same body temperature - they resisted at most a few hours before having hallucinations, anxiety and depression. In the absence of stimuli (sensory connections), while creating reality in an automatic way.

Puppies play, adult animals do not play. Men play all life. Play behaviors are related to non-specialized species. Highly specialized animals do not even play when they are young (eg a bird that lives in a specific area and feeds on that specific insect that lives in a specific area). Generalist animals play a lot. Playing is a way to make connections with the brain. Animals adapt by playing in the environment.

Man is born without connections with the external environment. The childhood years are dedicated to learning. Being born in a dependent environment is a limitation. Man goes into the sea, into space and into all environments.

We seek sensory connections to tickle our mind and bring about a sense of pleasure

By stimulating the vicious circuit, pleasure and fun, one can accomplish great deeds.

Look for the dimension of pleasure in your sporting activity and realize that we all have the tools to trigger this virtuous circle (commitment, competence, pleasure and fun).

Generally, lack of familiarity with fatigue hinders an athlete's potential even before he has reached his limits. A good coach should never minimize the effort: "what you want it to be". Minimizing means demotivating.

Each of us has his own model of sensory interpretation: The Gross brothers, winners of the longest Trail running race in the world at Tor des GĂ©ants, had a paradigm of fatigue inherited from their father, who traveled 60 km every day on foot carrying a very heavy cart to go to the workplace and sell the products he transported. The brothers Ulrich and Annemarie have a different perception of fatigue than most people.

Understanding what clients think is acceptable is important, as fatigue must be personalized. It is about cognitive mediation and cultural influence.

Resistance and success

Walter Mischel, analyzed the behavior of 200 children from the US school ( www.ilsole24ore.com ). The children, one by one, alone, were let into a room, with only the marshmallows inside. The child was asked to wait a few moments alone in the room, before he could consume a marshmallow. The room was taken up by a hidden camera. W. Mischel made a ranking based on willpower and followed the children during their growth.

He studied the correlation between result in the study and the incidence with resistance to temptations.

Those who are able to resist temptation have higher academic results and a brighter growth in work (based on earnings). Those who resisted temptations earn more.

After 20 years he has computerized the brain and noticed the correlation between resilience and brain activation.

Resisting a temptation involves a large consumption of glucose.

When you see a high calorie food, good, the instinct to eat it is strong: it is the frontal areas of the brain that consume glucose to inhibit the urge to eat.

Self-efficacy

The perception of fatigue is determined by the areas that develop specific adaptations to prolonged physical activity. Who runs the marathon has developed adaptations not only physical, but also brainwave.

The trainer should work on self-efficacy to motivate his clients; who has a low sense of self-efficacy feels incompetent, makes little effort and does not have fun.

To improve the sense of self-efficacy, work on calibrated targets based on the subject's ability. They must be reachable, but challenging. Challenger means something reachable, but not without effort.

Relationship maintenance

Do not standardize the relationship (one cannot disregard what kind of person one is dealing with. Introverted and extroverted subjects should be treated differently).

Distance communication creates distortions, we have brain structures, mirror neurons, so non-verbal communication is very important.

Factors that influence emotionality.

Make people feel capable

Pygmalion effect or self-fulfilling prophecy (//it.wikipedia.org/). Influence others.

The subjects of an experiment had to pass from middle school to high school and a staff of psychologists did a test to all these individuals, studying their profit and ability. They divided the examiners into two groups: donkeys and future genes. However, the high school professors were invited to consider the boys by reversing the results, the genes passed by donkeys and vice versa. After a year the team took the same boys and repeated the profit tests; the surprise was that the behavior of the teachers shifted the results: those who used to be donkeys, thanks to being considered as geniuses, improve a lot.

From this we deduce that people's performance is influenced by expectations. "If I make you feel capable, go up".

Leave autonomy: Being too descriptive, demotivating. (Don't be too didactic: extralot the femur better, flex the thigh and inhale ...).