Sports and Values go hand-in-hand. Yet, modern day has parents becoming rather blind to it. Instead of playing games outside, most kids are made to engage with activities in the safe space of their home.
These activities, more often than not, involve their children’s eyes glued to the screen. It is fairly common to see parents handing over their phones to toddlers to stop them from crying. And it makes sense to do so too; playing on devices are far less likely to cause injuries as opposed to physical activities.
But increased screen time causes a multitude of problems for both children and adults. This includes sleep difficulties, anxiety, eye sores and sometimes even depression! But this blog is not to mention the effects of increased screen time, but rather the values that get lost from not playing outside.
3 Values Sports Teach You
Fair Play
Anyone who’s played a sport or any game for that matter would’ve experienced unfairness. Lying about the score or where the shuttlecock or the ball hit are some of them.
While it’s all fun and games when playing for leisure, it’s something one can’t do in an actual match. Remember when spot fixing in cricket was the talk of the town? Fans didn’t take it lightly at all.
Is a win out of lying really a win at all? Sports teach you that there’s no room for cheating or winning dirty in a game or in life.
Discipline
Remember those days when you used to wake up early to practice? Or stayed back after classes to do so?
It wasn’t just coming early to play a few extra games but going through rigorous training which included everything from warm ups to drills to strategy.
Taking part in these activities from a young age teaches you the value of discipline. Growing up, you start valuing your time and the effort you put to the objective much more than you’d otherwise. Perhaps, this is the greatest value that playing a sport can teach you.
Goal-Setting
“A person without a goal is like a bird without wings.” – you must have come across this phrase before. Yet, there are so many who don’t keep an objective in mind, mostly because it’s daunting; setting a goal and working towards it needs a massive effort from your side. However, objective is something that coexists with competitive sports.
All those drills and practices with your teammates were executed with a goal in mind – winning. This objective helps streamline what to work on and how to work on them. This leads to a dire need for discipline. In fact, most values, if not all, that you imbibe from sports are complementary to each other.
These are, of course, the most common values one starts cultivating through sports, especially when engaging with it at a young age. Even UNESCO has its own program for training children to improve their values and skills through sports.
Children should be encouraged to take up sports and play outside rather than stay indoors and play video games. While playing video games is definitely fun, being seated for long hours just leads to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle for tomorrow’s youth. Finding the balance is key!
A bit on our very own #SportsTaughtMe
Our #SportsTaughtMe series that gets published every Tuesday on LinkedIn and Twitter, documents the various life lessons and values our users imbibed from playing sports. While it has been super fun hearing and documenting your stories, it has been eye-opening to know about the different doors of perception sports open for us!
Do you have a life lesson, skill or value that sports taught you? If yes, let us know in the comments!
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