EP 153: More Than a Game: 8 Lessons We Can Learn From Sports

Sports can teach us a lot more than we realize. Join host Lisa Tarkington in this episode of The Confident Podcast as she shares 8 life lessons we can learn from the sports world! Discover how sports and today’s athletes can inspire confidence, resilience, time management skills, and provide a positive influence on the next generation. Tune in for insights on how to add these valuable teachings into your own life!

Chapters:

• 0:00 - Intro
• 3:07 - How Athletes Can Influence Us
• 11:08 -  The 8 Lessons We Can Learn From Sports
• 19:45 - Key Takeaways & Outro

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

A couple of weeks ago I was scrolling through TikTok, like some of you guys might do at night, and I was watching this video about this guy on the street just interviewing people as they're walking by and the question that he was asking people is who is an actor or actress who is an amazing role model for the next generation and for youth? And I kid you not, it was like dead silence for these people while they were trying to think of someone who was a positive role model for the next generation and for youth. And sure some of them finally found an answer. But honestly, through that video, a lot of people were very much stumped by that. Welcome to the Confident Podcast. I am Lisa Tarkington, your host of this podcast. If you found yourself hitting play on this podcast, it means it was meant for you. My goal is to help, empower and guide you to become a better version of yourself through conversation, advice and tips that are real, vulnerable and authentic. I'm excited to have you join this journey with me, so let's get started. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Confident Podcast. I am your host, lisa Tarkington, and it is such an honor to be in this seat. I think I say honor every time we're doing these podcasts, because I just love the excitement that planning the podcast has for me, putting things on on this episode for you and just overall just being part of your world, your community, and I just want to say thank you to everybody that continues to send in me messages or emails saying how the podcast has really helped them. So thank you so much. And today's topic is going to be fun. I'm really excited for this. I actually had a whole other episode planned. Also was scheduling things out was going to do fun. I'm really excited for this. I actually had a whole nother episode planned. Also was scheduling things out. Was going to do something completely different.

Speaker 1: 1:50

But recently there's been something very close to my heart that's been happening, which is sports. Confidence in sports go hand in hand for me. Sports have been part of my life since I was little, from watching the Denver Broncos with my dad as a young age to when the Pistons were really good, growing up in that era to playing sports my whole life. And so what I have realized over time is how much sports can teach us about different things about life that we can then take and kind of like disseminate into different areas of our lives, and so what really got me thinking about this specifically recently is women's college basketball. It has been insane to me to watch how many people are tuning in, how many people are watching the game, how much sports has now become a way for people to connect, relate, have conversation, and it's been like that my whole life for me, but watching other people finally get to experience it has just been such a joy, and I knew that this is a topic that I needed to talk about in this podcast, because if you haven't been following women's college basketball, I'm going to tell you right now like you need to turn on the TV and you need to watch it. These finals have been insane. Now, don't get me wrong, men's basketball has just been just insane. My bracket is completely shot. Me and my husband and friends put together a bracket to play, but it was so fun because, again, we got to do a bracket together and work together and be in a community and have a group text and have some fun with that and build culture and community around sports as well, and so when I was thinking about this podcast and women's basketball and just all sports in general, so many things were flooding in my head about different examples I wanted to share with you guys. But really I want to take you back to the real reason why this episode is happening, and that is because of the word role models, and I want to dive into why that's really important for me.

Speaker 1: 4:03

So a couple of weeks ago I was scrolling through TikTok, like some of you guys might do at night, and I was watching this video about this guy on the street just interviewing people as they're walking by and the question that he was asking people is who is an actor or actress who is an amazing role model for the next generation and for youth? Role model for the next generation and for youth? And I kid you not, it was like dead silence for these people while they were trying to think of someone who was a positive role model for the next generation and for youth. And sure, some of them finally found an answer. But honestly, through that video, a lot of people were very much stumped by that and I'm not saying that there aren't some great role models that were actors and actresses or are right now, but it made me really think about like wow, like they couldn't just think of someone really quick. And then I started to ask people in my life well, who's an actor or actress in your life who you kind of look, who you look up to or who you think is a good, positive role model for you? And again, the pause, the silence, the way that it took them a while to figure that out was pretty interesting to me Because, on the flip side, my Facebook and I'm saying Facebook because I don't know if all generations are still using Facebook, but Facebook for me has just been flooded with talking about so many individuals who have just been amazing role models over the last year when it comes to sports and people that have been role models in the sports industry, and so my whole life has just been revolved around sports.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So, like I said, like I played, I watched sports. My family has watched, like I said, the NFL forever. We are huge Denver Bronco fans, but we do live in Michigan, so Detroit Lions fans and if you watch their seasons, it's been awesome. This year, college football, I graduated from Michigan State, so go green. And this year my hometown volleyball team won state finals and that's really important for me because to me that is something that was part of my life, my whole high school years, and so I even went to the state finals myself, and so it was really cool to watch these girls play. But the reason why it was also cool is because I watched so many young girls go to those events to watch those girls play, to learn from them, and they looked up to them, and so all of these things have been going on in the last year, right, but, like I said, right now is very much March madness. By the time you guys see this, we'll probably already know who won, so I'm very excited for that.

Speaker 1: 6:46

But the other day I was really busy with work, and instead of not turning the TV on and continuously working, I remember whatever I was doing at that moment I rushed home because Iowa was playing and if you haven't heard about Kaitlyn Clark yet, I promise you that you need to Google her, you need to check her out because she's an amazing role model and Caitlin Clark was playing. And so I had to rush home because I was like I want to watch this girl play. I've I have just been following her journey for the last couple of years and I'm just watching her continue to inspire so many generations, and for me, I was doing that and at the same time I was texting my mom and my mom and dad were doing something like oh yeah, we're rushing home after this so that we can go watch the game. And it was just cool to watch, like how I'm watching people, like knowing that these are big things. But also the people that are in these platforms are role models to the next generation, and so watching Caitlin play has been so awesome for me. I'm such a fangirl I like don't fangirl a lot about sports people, but man, I'm just watching her pave the way for the next generation and also all generations.

Speaker 1: 7:59

She's teaching us all the things, all these different skills which we're going to dive into here in a little bit, but it's been pretty cool to watch how genuine she's been. Also, she just recently did a commercial with Nike that it actually wasn't about her. It was about I did this, so you can too. And it gives me chills to even think about it, because that commercial was all about like I did this, I was able to do this, and I know you can too. She talked about it, because that commercial was all about like I did this, I was able to do this, and I know you can too. She talked about the records that she's broke and how she hopes that someone else is going to break hers, and how she got to be part of the Nike commercial and one day someone else can be part of that too and I thought about all of the people watching those commercials or watching her play and just learning from her, watching how she interacts, watching how she talks to the reporter, and just all of these different aspects of where she's teaching you different lessons.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Now I'm using her as the example. There's many, many sports leaders who are doing the exact same thing, but I have some more examples that I'm going to share here in a little bit. But obviously I'm a fangirl, so I have to talk about her, and recently I've been working a lot more with sports teams, so a lot with my career and my job. You guys know I teach confidence, and one of the things, too, is having confidence within yourself, but having confidence with your team and your skills and your abilities to work together, and so, as I've been watching this and as I've been an athlete myself, it's been really cool to think about what sports can teach us. Now, don't get me wrong there are a lot of things that you can learn from other things besides sports, but today, for this podcast alone, I want you to just kind of take it in of. Maybe you didn't play sports in high school, maybe you did, and what are the things that we can learn, though, regardless? Maybe you just watch sports, maybe you play them, and for me, I still call myself an athlete because I'm still a runner, I'm still the person that plays pickup volleyball, even though I'm sore as heck afterwards, and still trying to find those different things that sports can teach us and how it creates community.

Speaker 1: 10:09

So, when we think about role models, back to the word of why I decided to even talk about this is because I know that we have a very impressionable young audience just in the world when it comes to social media. We also have impressionable all generations. We're easily able to scroll through social media, we're easy to think that we need this instant gratification and we're just kind of taking in all of this information, and so when we are seeing people out on social media who probably aren't positive role models for the next generation, they're still consuming that, and so it's so important for us to talk about the role models that are in our personal life, but also the people that are in sports as well, and so for me, those are people like Caitlin Clark to Venus Williams, from Jason and Kylie Kelsey to the Detroit Lions, because they've had such a growth year. So in all areas of sports right now, there's conversations happening like never before. It's so awesome to see. So for me, sports are not just about the game, but it's about teaching all of these life lessons that can really open up conversations in households, but open conversations in different areas of our life. I have loved the conversations that I've grown with my parents over the last couple of years. With these, I've loved hearing how dads and daughters are watching Caitlin Clark or watching the Chiefs play this past year. I've loved hearing how families have watched the Detroit Lions or been able to go to a playoff game together, and it's all about how we've been shaping community in these different areas. But also, what are the lessons that we're learning while watching these individuals too? And as I've been watching, these things like these are the things that I teach, right? So I should know all of these things, and I do, but sometimes we forget that we just need those other reminders and those people that are like okay, yeah, they also have their negative days too, but they don't give up on themselves. And so what I want to talk about today is the eight things sports can teach us right now. Right now, to help us in our lives, to help us be better individuals, to take all of these skills that all of these sports individuals, all these athletes, are teaching us and really just take it to the next level with our own lives.

Speaker 1: 12:30

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Speaker 1: 13:46

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Speaker 1: 14:57

So, number one, you guys know it this is called the Confident Podcast. It's confidence. Confidence is like the number one thing I think athletes can teach us right now, because it is about believing in your skills and your abilities. When someone starts playing a sport, they're probably not the most confident, right? They have a lot to learn. They're trying to figure things out. Same thing with even like. I'm going to use the example of the Detroit Lions they had to build their team over time to be confident in each other Lions they had to build their team over time to be confident in each other. Take Caitlin Clark I just watched a video the other day that she wasn't confident in a certain area when it came to basketball, so she had to do some work with a coach, and this is like the things that she had to learn when playing basketball to help her get better. So no one started off thinking like I'm the best, but what they did was not give up on their skills and their abilities, and confidence is built over time, and so as you start to work on a skill or a talent, it's going to get better because you are going to become more confident in it. And so these are examples of like Venus Williams, like I said, jason Kelsey, caitlin Clark all of these individuals who had to start somewhere, but as you see them on the court, their confidence is just shining because they're in their element. And, if you remember, I just did a podcast a couple weeks ago about the zone of genius, and so how cool is it to see someone in their zone of genius? But it's also knowing that it took them time to really build in that confidence.

Speaker 1: 16:27

The next thing that sports are teaching us right now is teamwork and collaboration. I would say that it's teaching us two different things. When it comes to teamwork and collaboration, it's teaching us what real positive teamwork looks like and also what it doesn't look like. I bet there's many stories out in the media right now that show us what teamwork, when it's not in a good format, when it's negative what that does to an individual and what that does to a team and how they are not able to achieve certain things. But on the flip side, if we look at the positive, athletes are teaching us, and sports teams are teaching us, a lot about teamwork. It's teaching us that when we work together, we can achieve a common goal, and so for athletes, it's about probably winning the game or achieving a level of success. So they have to learn how to communicate effectively, how to support each other and how to collaborate, and that's something that we can do in our lives. How do we want to do that in our households? How do we want to do that in the workplace? And when we can watch how they're unified and coming together, we can take those things back for ourselves and add that into our lives. You know, I watch a lot of coaches and athletes when they're getting interviewed with reporters say it was a team effort. You know, our team has really worked on X together so that we can execute that, and one thing I love about that is like, hey, we had to work on this together to get better, and then they're able to see that result on the court or whatever, or the field, whatever they're playing on, and so that's a really key thing that we can take back into our lives.

Speaker 1: 18:02

The next one is resiliency and just pushing through and getting over setbacks and bumps in the road. So I don't think there's an athlete out there who will tell you that it's always been easy for them. And so, watching these individuals maybe it's an injury, maybe things didn't go their way, maybe they lost a game there's all these setbacks that could set them back and maybe not want them to do it again but what they teach us is to have resilience, to move forward, and that, as we overcome those things, the next time it happens the setback doesn't feel as large, because I've already gotten through it, I know how to get through that obstacle, and so this is going to be something that we can also add into our lives, like, how do we overcome setbacks, how do we look at these athletes and see how they've to be something that we can also add into our lives, like, how do we overcome setbacks, how do we look at these athletes and see how they've done it, so that we can also do that as well. The next one is discipline and dedication. So discipline is my word of the year. So this one hits home very much for me. But sports in general, athletes in general, coaches in general, have to have a lot of discipline. I was listening to someone the other day a reporter was sharing that there was an athlete that was really trying to get back from an injury and they were sharing different examples of how early they get up what they do beforehand, before even practice starts. We've heard the stories of Kobe Bryant when he had to be really disciplined so that he could achieve the success that he wanted, and so none of these people just were handed these things. I know it's easy to see like, oh, they're famous, they're doing all of these great things, but what they've taught us is, with dedication and discipline you can achieve a lot of things. And so, again, how do we add that ripple effect into our own lives when it comes to what we want to achieve?

Speaker 1: 19:51

The next one is leadership and responsibility. As a leadership consultant and a leadership coach, this one is just amazing because, as a leader, you have to have the self-awareness of how to manage different people on the field with you or the court. You have to understand how am I going to work together? Back to that teamwork word so that we can achieve this goal. It teaches us to be role models. It teaches us how to be mentors. Some of us, some individuals, including myself, was a captain at some point, and so you're the one leading the pack, not only on your team, but leadership within the community that serves you.

Speaker 1: 20:26

I might be wrong on this, but I do believe the Iowa LSU women's basketball game was 12 million people. Correct me or I might be wrong on that, but I think it was 12 million people that tuned in. That's 12 million people that you got to show your confidence in what you do, but also your leadership your leadership on and off the court. The next one is respect, and this is actually perfect with the next one respect and sportsmanship. So we're going to lose sometimes in life, we're going to have setbacks, we're going to have things not go our way, but how we react is going to be important. How we don't play victim is going to be important, and I think that that is something that I've been seeing more and more is the individuals who own what might have went wrong, but also respecting each other on and off the court and how they treat each other. I think what that's doing is teaching all of us how to also respect other people as well. This is really important because we have to respect everybody on the field, like the officials, for example, aren't always going to make the best calls that we might agree with, but they're going to do it what's best and what's probably just and right, but we also have to respect that as well, and so when we think about how to add this into our lives, it's the same thing. How do we respect our leaders? How do we respect all of the different people that touch us? Got two more guys.

Speaker 1: 21:55

The next one is time management and prioritization, and this is something that's really hitting home for me, because, as someone who is working so much on time management and priorities right now, it's really cool to see and think about how sports has really helped me do that and how all of these athletes have to do that too right, like they have to train for things. They college athletes or even pro sports they're. They might have a family, they might be going to school, like all of these different things that they have to figure out, and so it really teaches you. Okay, if this person can have this success and do all of these things like what am I doing with my time and how do I be more effective with that as well?

Speaker 1: 22:33

And then the last thing that it teaches us is mental and physical well-being, which is so important. It's not just the physical aspect of it, but, guys, sports are so mental. There are many times when the mental piece of a sport, or anything kind of, took over me versus the physical piece. I got into my head, but I had to learn how to overcome that, and as you watch these athletes and when they're on the big screen, there's a lot more pressure that they face, and so having to not only be physically fit, but also be in a mental good place is really important. And so, when we listen to these things, how also be in a mental good place is really important. And so, when we listen to these things, how can we do that too, and how do we watch these individuals and learn from that? So, parents out there or employees or whatever whoever is listening to it, because we all have different hats that we wear I want you to think about how sports right now are teaching us different things that now you can go and teach maybe your team, maybe your kids, maybe it's a kitchen table conversation, maybe it's watching a sports game together or going to a sports game together.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Maybe it's a team activity where you're having conversation. What sports are teaching us right now is community. It's teaching us all of the things that I just shared. But now what we have to do is then implement these things into our lives to really make the change and notice like, wow, look at all these great things that they've done. How can I do that too? So, because I've been on the Caitlin Clark role model piece for a little bit, I'm going to share some other role models with you guys that I really, really love. So I already talked about Caitlin Clark, so I'm just going to like, let that one go to the side for right now.

Speaker 1: 24:14

But another one is Drew Brees. So he I just adore this man. So he I just adore this man. He was a quarterback for the NFL and how he overcame so many obstacles to be resilient, how he was respectful for individuals. You think about Serena and Venus Williams. Both are iconic tennis players, but they had to overcome a lot of adversity and they talk a lot about that. But they also not just talk. They don't play the victim mindset, they play the game, they show an action as well. Another one is JJ Watt. You guys probably heard a lot about him when Houston was flooding a long time ago I don't even know what year it was but he was a big role model and really helped people during that time. I've already talked about Jason Kelsey. His whole family, him and his wife, I think, are amazing role models for this.

Speaker 1: 25:08

And then, last but not least, is my Detroit Lions that are close to me. They have overcome a lot of challenges over the years. Heck, we haven't ever won a playoff game, and so for us to make it this far was pretty cool to watch. But I also think what they taught us is to not give up right. Sometimes the pieces and the puzzles don't always fix, but that doesn't mean that you quit. That means that what do we need to do to make changes in our lives? But also, when we do make mistakes, how are we going to own those? You know, when I think about all of these athletes and I think about what sports are doing, not only in my life but those lives around me, it's pretty amazing, and so I challenge you today to think about all the things that you can take from athletes, you can take from teamwork, from a sports team, you can take from conversations with your kids or to create conversations as well. And how do you take all of these things and make your life better because of it? It's so easy to say, oh, I envy or I'm jealous or all of these things about these individuals that I just shared some examples for. But I think what's better is if we actually do something about it in our own lives and take what they've done and how they've overcome things, how they're confident, how they've put the work in, to then do that to achieve our own success. Because what I will say all the time to people is when we are in our zone of genius or and not or and when we feel a sense of belonging this purpose, the world is going to be a better place. And right now, I know we could all use the positivity. Right now, you know we could all use the positivity right now. You know.

Speaker 1: 26:42

Before I close out today, I wanted to share one thing. I don't know if people follow the Dove Self-Esteem Project, but they have one recently around sports and confidence. A lot of girls are not playing sports after a certain age because their confidence is shot, and I'm hoping that role models like Caitlin Clark or Paige from UConn and a variety of other leaders out there are going to be the role models they need to start believing in themselves. But if your daughter or son, or maybe yourself, is struggling when it comes to confidence, I want you to take a pause and reflect and look at all of these athletes and notice they had to start somewhere too. They had to overcome a lot of different obstacles. Maybe that is not adversity in some sense, but maybe in other areas it was an injury or whatever that looks like, and so I challenge you to look at your own life and think about well, what do I need to do to achieve that success that I want, because I truly believe that we all can do it. So, like I always say, continue to spread love and kindness to everybody that you meet and let's go change the world with our confidence and our positivity.

Speaker 1: 27:51

Thank you. Thank you for tuning into the Confident Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, follow the Confident Podcast on Instagram and TikTok and share it with those who might benefit. Also, if you are looking to work one-on-one with me, message and follow me on Instagram at LisaTarkingtonOfficial. Stay confident, stay inspired and until next time, keep striving to be the best version of yourself. Take care.