Sports build character in more than one ways. It teaches you lifelong lessons that stay with you for the rest of your life. It instills a sense of justice and fairness within you. It provides you an opportunity to come in contact with social and moral values. There are other key virtues too that sports can inculcate in you. Below is a list of such virtues that can equip you with all the necessary tools required to enrich your life deeply.
It teaches you to become a role model
It is a universally acknowledged fact that action speaks louder than words so your actions will decide your worth. A sports coach who respects his team members, keeps no grudges against the opponents, and listens to the advice of officials; his team members embody the same traits. They also live up to these ideals set by their coach. However, not all sports coaches present themselves as a paradigm of virtues, so their team members carry the same legacy. It can be easily substantiated by a study conducted by the Josephson Institute Center for SportsEthics in 2006 that suggested, more than 50 percent of male football players and 40 percent of basketball players approve of trash-talking, for they have learnt to behave this way from their respective coaches.
It emphasizes upon sportsmanship
Sportsmanship is a significant virtue that most of us fail to represent. Sports teach you to embody this virtue so that you can stay happy and satisfied even when you don’t win. It is a kind of virtue that teaches you to develop life skills like resilience, patience, perseverance, discipline, hard work, humility, and importance of competitive spirit. Most importantly, it teaches you to keep your expectations at bay, strive hard, and don’t panic if you don’t achieve what you desire. It makes the process of learning more thrilling and enjoyable since it is no longer connected to the despair of the past regrets.
It teaches you the art of forgiveness
Forgiveness is an art that only few of us manage to learn. It is followed by countless attempts to correct the past mistakes that haunt us for the rest of our lives. However, sports teach you to forgive those opponents who have hurt your sentiments and move on. It teaches you in a way that you begin to think more about the intention behind the actions instead of the consequences. It makes you understand that there is nothing inherently good or bad, it is just an experience.
As Stuart Robbins, chair of the Department of Physical Education at York University said, ‘The negative and positive effects do not result from participation but from the experience that it provides you.’
Sports open up new avenues for you so that you can learn all that can help you improve the quality of your life and become a better version of yourself. However, in today’s age, the old adage, ‘Sports instill a myriad of values in a man’ is considered a cliché, but it is an accurate depiction of the faculty that we call ‘sports’.
Author Bio
Grace Payne is a Senior Copywriter based in UK. Currently, she is working at a prestigious firm in Yorkshire where she offers assignment help UK citizens require in their respective work.
