By Jennifer Moss — 2019
When we equate work we love with “not really working,” it propagates a belief that if we love it so much, we should do more of it—all of the time, actually. But this mentality leads to burnout, and the impact on our mental health can be profound.
Read on hbr.org
CLEAR ALL
In the documentary “The Weight of Gold,” Phelps presents a stark picture of the mental wear and tear Olympians endure.
Osaka’s mental health challenges are nothing new in her isolating sport. What is new is the acceptance she’ll face—and the paths back—if she takes a prolonged break.
In the past few weeks, my journey took an unexpected path but one that has taught me so much and helped me grow. I learned a couple of key lessons.
1
Through the size of her platform, however, and her decision to choose well-being over pursuit of a Grand Slam title, Osaka offers the promise of bringing mental health awareness—both inside and outside of sports—to an entirely new level.
A couple of months of the year, encourage them to do something else. If they play soccer, they could switch off to tennis.
Athlete burnout is a cognitive-affective syndrome characterized by perceptions of emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced accomplishment, and devaluation of sport.
And it can affect anyone who specializes in one activity—even kids on sports teams.
Burnout is hard to define. For this article, I’m referring to the point in time where it’s a good for an athlete to take a break from conventional training; the specific time in a career or training phase where they need some time away.
Setting high goals is great, but how you deal with falling short determines how long you’re willing to keep chasing them.
What leads to burnout is too much training stress coupled with too little recovery. Training stress can come from a variety of sources on and off the field, such as physical, travel, time, academic or social demands.