Character building means the way one processes all the messiness of the world and keeps himself grounded in his beliefs and principles, this process begins from childhood. A kid interacts with his classmates from a young age and the main objective is to find like-minded people through playing and sharing time in the classrooms, this develops personalities based on what they’re passionate about.
But the school system still functions only as an educational platform with specific goals in academic achievement; they’re not focused on the character building of that child. In a populated dense city with busy lives, children don’t have the scope for playing freely and mixing with different kids their age which leads to poor social development and awkwardness that takes a long time to get rid of.
So, what is sports? Sport, in general, can be defined as any sort of competition that involves specific skills to be mastered and executed, and the process of learning, practising, and executing is the backbone of character development, not to mention dealing with failure after going through all these phases. Many aspects don’t meet the eye when it comes to sports.
Competition is hard, bv hard I mean extremely different than any other learning process. First, you have to discipline yourself to learn the required skills, this may come in handy to people who have a natural talent and maybe more rigorous to those who have to work a bit harder to master those skills, then you have to have the discipline to repeat those same skills and practice them over and over again.
After that the most terrifying part comes, which is the actual competition, self-doubt, nervousness, anxiety, and tension is at all-time high no matter how small the audience or how minuscule the tournament is, you’re expected to perform at your best not only for yourself but also for your teammates. This expectation proves to be the number one factor that most people give up in organized sports, they can barely contain the pressure and most of all try to deal with the depression of failure.
Think of all those things, and think about a professional cricketer when he’s at the pitch wearing the colors of his country and is being watched by literally millions of people worldwide.
The insecurities have to be shoved down to the deepest hole in his mind so that he can cope with pressure and perform. And all of these aspects are true for a child who maybe is prepping for his school cricket tournament. Let us see what traits he may learn while doing this:
1. Discipline: The words sports and discipline can go hand in hand because to excel at any level you need to follow a specific set of rules over and over again and make sure you’re sticking to your routine. This helps kids understand the value of self-development and hard work as most of the time the learning may be fun but the kid who does better is in most cases who follows the instructions exactly and can execute it to their fullest form.
2. Mentorship: This also affects academic learning but due to its boring nature and exam-heavy approach the students sometimes miss the connection with their teachers and just think of them as screaming authority figures. But when a child learns from his coaches who expect more and can also provide instructions to develop the game he enjoys, he takes the instructions at heart.
3. Patience: Skill development takes time. The child naturally learns to be patient and work hard to up his level. This skill is necessary to not allocate energy to unnecessary actions.
4. Team building: Working with people is a fundamental trait for professionals, this entails skills like communication and leadership. Here the child gets the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of his coach and learn how to lead a team to victory or how to act in defeat, he learns how to motivate his teammates, these traits are going to be effective for his whole life ahead.
5. Learning to Cope with failures: Life is all about taking risks, and a by-product of this risk is a failure. People struggle with this aspect of failure even in middle age, but coping with failure from childhood and moving forward is the greatest lesson sports can teach a child. He becomes more competent and his mind becomes more prone to taking risks and he becomes more confident.
So are you confident to get involved in sports? Share with us your thoughts on which sports give the best opportunity to gain these attributes.
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Writer
Nazmul Haque Parthib
Intern,Content Writing Department YSSE