Healthy Sense of Self is happy to be a sponsor of Bellevue High School Athletics. When Northwest Athletics called us proposing that we sponsor Bellevue High School’s current sport schedule of Football and Basketball, it got us thinking.

What is the role of athletics in the larger picture of a whole education of a person?

Participation in individual and team sports can build confidence in body and mind. It’s training that gives people skills that can serve them for a lifetime.  Getting physically stronger, developing more agility, having a mindful connection to one’s body, and having a healthy outlet for stress relief are all great by-products. Athletic teams can also create community and a sense of belonging while developing leaders and future adults who are able to identify healthy as opposed to unhealthy competition. 

But what about what motivates a student athlete?

Ideally as parents, we support our teens in the pursuit of sports in school and beyond when it is their idea and choice–not because we need them to do it or because our kids feel they “need” to do it to make us happy. Letting our children decide for themselves supports the development of the whole and natural self of our children. The teen with a healthy Sense of Self is more likely to be a success as a student athlete too. To be directly motivated (to do sports) is the best reason of all. To be directly motivated (in any choice we make) is the best reason of all. 

Practicing a sport for a parent’s approval and mistaking that for acknowledgment of who you are (which might even be fulfilling a nonverbal expectation) doesn’t work well in sports or in the long game of a person’s own life. Engaging in sports requires Direct Motivation because only then will a person be able to hang in there through the challenging moments, losses, and setbacks that are part of being a student athlete. To know that you are playing for the joy of it makes the wins (individually and as a team) even sweeter. True love of the sport fuels the desire to excel which will carry a person with genuine and grounded enthusiasm through more decades of success.

Here are two questions and an answer for you or your teen that may help to discover whether his/her motivation is Direct:

• Who am I (Know yourself!)
• Am I my own person?
• I am my SELF – my life is MINE!
• Healthy Sense of Self wishes the student athletes of Bellevue High a winning season or at least a lot of fun trying!

~Antoinetta Vogels and the team at Healthy Sense of Self.

Check out what we mean by Direct Motivation: https://healthysenseofself.com/terminology/