4 Sports Strategies You Can Use to Succeed in Business

Is it possible to train for an Ironman race on top of a corporate job? If you are struggling to make time for your yoga class after work, it may seem impossible to imagine an intense training schedule for a triathlon with an equally successful professional career. But not only do these endurance athletes survive an often-extensive training regime but also balance demanding jobs with tight work schedules and frequent travelling. Here are four valuable lessons to become a better athlete and business leader:

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Passion
The good news is that each of us has the power to ignite passion actively. It starts to grow when we work intensively towards a purposeful goal and realize how our efforts are resulting in steady progress. In business, passion allows professionals to mobilize the intellectual and emotional energy fully, thereby driving businesses towards their goals. It provides the necessary sustaining power to push through when going gets tough. It provides you with the energy to inspire and activate people around to strive for a common goal.

Raw Honesty
We need to regularly take a step back and look at ourselves in the mirror for some honest self-evaluation. Be radically honest about where our shortcomings and mental barriers are and make concrete decisions on what we are practically going to do about them. When we are trained to think clearly and honestly, we can speed up our learning curves. We become better equipped to intelligently focus our energy on the things that effectively allow us to move towards our goals, ultimately become more successful.

Recovery
If recovery is not a given high priority, stagnation and injuries are the inevitable results. Also, building in rest days allows you to become a more composed person as it helps to maintain a better balance between family, work, and fitness goals. As leaders, we strive to reach an end-goal with company values in mind. We need to recover to perform well. As leaders, it allows us to be more creative, make better decisions, solve challenging problems and be more constructive in our team interactions. For example, we can unplug from devices in the evening, spend time with our hobbies and arrange our working days more efficiently, to save time for reflection and preparation.

Mental Mastery
For best performance in an Ironman race, it is essential to train the mental muscle. The race day brings along so many, often unexpected, challenges that we must master even to reach the finish line. Business leaders need to master both their thoughts and actions. As leaders, we must go through rough experiences where we feel that we need to push ourselves to our very limits mentally and physically. A strong mind allows us to rebound from setbacks and be mentally flexible in dealing with challenges. Our brains are naturally regulated to slow us down when we have reached about 50 per cent of our potential. Through the right kind of training, our brains and bodies can adapt to perform at much higher levels.

All of us have the potential to significantly improve our performance and achieve success in business and life.

(This article was first published in the December 2019 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)