The Best Preparation for Life

Are you wondering what is the best way to work with your children’s talents and to prepare your children for the future as best as you can? During the “Parent as a positive couch” workshop, parents and teachers find out how to effectively couch and mentor their children according to the latest findings in the field of positive psychology, in order to make their children not only successful, but also happy in their lives. The topics are also based on Jan Mühlfeit’s book − The Positive Leader, one of the bestsellers in the Czech Republic. Moreover, we organize workshops for children and their parents: “Unlock Children’s Potential” and “Unlock Your Potential for Secondary School Students”. Our workshops focus on discovering children’s individual talents and finding out how to work with them. This is one of the topics of the book for parents that is planned to be released in September 2018. Come to our website janmuhlfeit.com to find out more about our seminars and projects. You can also watch our “Unlock your Childrens’ Potential” seminar and the “Your Talent is Unique” series on www.flowee.cz.

Sport shapes us and influences our lives. It has influenced me and Katka since childhood. Until I was 12 years old, I was fat. I did some sports, but not professionally. At 12 years old, when I entered a tennis club, according to my trainer I was more fit for sumo. I had two options. I could apply for a sumo course or stop overeating and start training and exercising. I chose the second option. In our laundry room I regularly played against the wall, I ran 10 kilometres a day (which I still do) and at weekends, even when it was cold, I got up at 4 o’clock in the morning to go exercise in the hall. One year after I joined the club, the best youth player was the chairman’s son. Two years later, it was me. This experience created a stable line in my mind, a synapse which, since then, tells me that every no is the beginning of yes. If you persist long enough, you eventually win.

Thanks to sport I know that if I want to be good at something, I have to train regularly. Sport taught me endurance, I became fit and lost weight. As soon as I looked better, I also felt better. If you do sports, you perform better, you are usually more creative, more active and healthier. I am convinced that exercise, even if only in the form of regular walks, should be one of the basic life pillars of every healthy person.

Katka has done sports since early childhood. She has tried rock ‘n’ roll, ice skating, inline skating, skiing, snowboarding, football and several other activities. She was a very active child. Her parents realised that she enjoyed sports, so they let her express herself freely. At 9 years old, she started to play basketball and became a team captain. She played this sport for 10 years. Thanks to that she learned to be a team player. When others cried, she tried to encourage them. Apart from mental toughness, discipline and the art of a team play she gained friendships that have lasted until now.

Be Able to Focus

After school finished, children used to go out and play. It had great significance. They socialized and competed with each other, not worrying about mistakes and being aware that if you fail one day, it does not necessarily mean that you fail the next day as well. They played football, hockey or dodgeball in front of houses, girls used to walk in parks or in the nearby hills. Physical activity was omnipresent.

The current situation is that half of the children who are defined by tests as competitive dislike competing. Why? They are afraid of failure. They have not learned to accept failure and it has not become a normal part of their lives. If children do not do sport, they do not have a chance to find out that failure does not necessarily mean a lifelong lack of success. And, what is more, they do not find out that they can learn from failure and win the next time. They are not strong enough, so they often give up after their first failure. Children may also learn this in PE, but classes do not take place often enough and not all children enjoy them.

Today children lack outdoor physical activities. Also, they suffer from obesity more often, they are less active, quickly lose attention and they fall ill more often. One of the reasons is that they are constantly surrounded by devices distracting their attention. This generation is over-informed, but under-focused – over-informed, but without the ability to concentrate, which is why they do not even do sport. If one wants to succeed in sport, one has to be able to concentrate; to be here and now.

Clean Your Mind

Naturally created teams are nowadays replaced by social media, which can bring you to the flow state, but only to a rather shallow one. Social media partly satisfies your need for new incentives and information, but it does not, for example, induce the production of oxytocin – a hormone formerly associated especially with childbirth and breast-feeding, whose production is stimulated by eye contact and touch. Oxytocin helps us create connections, trust, feeling of togetherness, satisfaction and empathy. This is actually one of the reasons why children from children’s homes have troubles integrating well into a team or a group. They lack these experiences and hormones. Even though social media have undisputable positive aspects, they can never replace social contact, whether at home, in a sports team, a theatre club, a choir or in an orchestra.

Children are now used to walking on the so called red carpet, as parents try to remove all obstacles from their paths. However, your mental toughness manifests itself by being able to go on and fulfil your tasks, even if the situation is not really easy. Mental toughness can be learned, but not by using social media or surfing on the Internet.

Telephones, tablets, computers and other devices are addictive. It is very common that in order to gain time for technologies, parents let their children play with them, so an infant capable of browsing the Internet is not that rare. Parents are usually proud of that. There is nothing wrong with using new technologies, but regular digital hygiene should not be missing. It does not simply mean turning the device off or logging off. It is essential to learn how to switch off mentally as well; how to clean your mind. And this is exactly what sport can do.

More Physical Exercise, Better Competitiveness

Physical exercise enhances children’s health, mental toughness, creativity and intelligence. It would be interesting to analyse the competitiveness index of European countries. I am convinced that the competitiveness is higher in those countries where sports classes are supported. Investments and the overall support of sport were also reflected in the last Olympic games results. Of course, Northern countries have a certain advantage in winter sports thanks to their climatic conditions, but it must be noted that although the cost of living is very expensive there, you can do sports almost for free. And it brings results.

Although the Czech Republic has made a substantial step forward in the last few years, we are still not there. In Germany, Slovakia, Austria, as well as in Hungary, investments in sport are higher. I am convinced that in countries where sport is supported on a mass scale and PE classes are more frequent, it is reflected not only in people’s health and social life, but also in economy.

The importance of physical activity for children and adults is well-known in the Czech Republic, too. That is why there is the project called Extra class of physical exercise (see box). It is supported by the Czech Olympic Committee who I work with closely, so following an agreement with the authors of the project, Katka and me decided to promote this helpful activity. According to PE teachers who met Martin Kafka from the Czech Rugby Union and a member of the project team, rugby teaches children the following: In order to achieve your goals, you have to fight, observe the rules, respect your opponents and referees, stay disciplined, show solidarity, as well as control your emotions. According to Martin Kafka, it is the best preparation for life: “Apart from other things, sport hurts. If you do not experience pain in your childhood and you do not learn to cope with it, how can you succeed in life?”

Stay in the Game

At job interviews, most employers currently take into account whether potential employees are physically active. Those who do some sport usually have more drive. I know it from my own experience. When I asked people practising sports, either in the past or present, whether regular exercise had played any role in their career success, all of them confirmed it had helped them a lot. People who do not do sports usually have less drive. Often they lack the required toughness, endurance and good physical health. I am sure that if I had not had such a good physical condition and mental toughness, I would not have survived my mental issues. When I suffered from depression and my future was, as Cyril Höschl says, “fifty to fifty”, at a certain point my subconsciousness “exploded” and pushed me back to the game.

The body and the mind are connected. And employers are aware of it. That is why most of them provide their employees with a free entry to fitness centres, swimming pools and dance or other classes. Naturally, not everyone makes use of their free tickets. Many people simply say that they do not have time for physical activity. With such an attitude, however, they only harm themselves.

In reality, essential digital hygiene is not only a matter of self-organization. If your boss sends tons of e-mails during the weekend, most colleagues also read them during the weekend. Even if your boss claims that it is not necessary to read them at the weekend, the work goes on. However, there is a possibility to postpone the e-mails and send them automatically at a set time. Some people think that if they work 16 hours a day, they will be more successful and more productive. It is nonsense. The brain is tired and needs to rest. Even if you like your job and it brings you to the flow state.

Loaded Like a Top Sportsman

Secondary school educated and university educated people who engage in business, science, IT and other mentally demanding activities face a load in their work like top sportsmen. Sportsmen, however, have support teams consisting of masseurs, physiotherapists, psychologists and couches. By contrast, ordinary people have personal assistants at the most, so they have to cope with all demands on their own. Sport is thus a very important complement to business.

If you are not talented at sports, do not force yourself into it. The absence of sports talent does not really result in failure in life. If a child is not good at sport or it is not their cup of tea, it does not make any sense to force them into it. It would discourage them and they could even be afraid of it. Nevertheless, if possible, try to encourage them to do some physical activity. Little sporting habits are always useful. The previously mentioned skills such as mental toughness may be also obtained by other activities, for example by playing a musical instrument, singing in a choir, attending modelling or writing classes. Any utilitarian activity is helpful. However, it is easier to achieve them by physical activity. Sport is funny and, while doing it, children are not even aware that they are learning. As soon as they learn to attend trainings regularly, the habit remains imprinted in their bodies forever.

By Jan Mühlfeit,
Global Strategist, Coach and Mentor,
former Microsoft Chairman for Europe

 

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Extra Class of Physical Exercise

Extra class of physical exercise is an initiative that aims to implement quality PE classes in schools and increase the compulsory number of classes by one. “Our goal is to show children that sport can be interesting and entertaining, thus making them want to do it. While doing sport, no one punishes them, bosses them around or organizes them like a policeman,” explains one of the project founders and a member of the football association Antonín Plachý.

In reaction to the worsening health of children caused by the lack of physical activities, in spring 2015 the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports proposed to experimentally explore the possibility to increase the amount of professionally led children’s physical activities in after school clubs in primary schools.

For the sake of children, top players in the fields of sport and education joined forces and prepared a programme that makes it possible to achieve the set goals. They methodically prepared materials teaching children skills necessary for a certain sport by the means of simple and funny games. They shot exemplary videos, produced manuals and created a system of lectures and workshops for teachers who experience the new methods of teaching from the children’s point of view. Usually they are excited, as it is a great inspiration. Mentors work with the assumption that children generally enjoy physical activities, so if they are bored at PE classes, it is often the teacher’s fault. Pupils spend a lot of time waiting and standing around, and classes are often cancelled in the first grades. However, teachers should not put an end to the fun, but in fact develop it and encourage children, whether talented or not, to gain a positive relationship to physical activities. Other important aims of the Extra class of physical exercise project are as follows: To make teachers worry less about children getting injured, to allocate more resources to sport and to change the ways of education in pedagogical faculties.

Thousands of teachers who wish to change things and are not afraid to do so have already joined this project. According to the available data, pupils who participate in the project want to repeat it, they skip PE classes less often and, what is more, they are more active in other classes as well. Some of them even start doing some physical activity outside of school, joining sports clubs.

All information about the project is available on the following website: http://hop.rvp.cz/.