Work:Life Balance: 5 tips for Coaches in Sport

The demands of high performance sport are making many men lose balance in their life. The cost of this is massive, from divorce, short-term relationships, absent parent, physical and emotional illness. From a coach I work with:

"My relationship broke down. I'm always away. I'm always down on energy, unable to see friends and family. I feel guilty that it's my fault, and I'm tired of every human interaction being a transaction. I'm lonely."

Part 1: 3 Main Reasons Why Men in Sport Lose Balance

Reason 1 - Chasing The Thing

Many of the men I work with are considered highly successful in the world of performance sport and academia. And with that level of achievement comes a perceived expectation to keep delivering in their career and to be happy doing it. And if they don't deliver it, it's their own fault:

"I perceive not achieving as a failure, which falls on me because I have the prerequisite tools to achieve those things. I felt pressure to achieve the markers of what people perceive as me being really good at. So I was inevitably going to fail, which drove me into a hole."

Now there's an assumption that happiness comes with success. And, personally, I fell head first in this trap within my career and was baffled at why the shine of each position I had began to wear off after a while. This plagued me for much of my life up until I was 36 years old. I'd assume blame on the people, the environment, and the organizations for being the cause of my frustrations.

And here's a quote that supports that: "I felt panic that I didn't know what else I needed to do to try and be achieving the thing. Panic of not knowing how to be where I was supposed to be, world-class and respected of the thing. How do I stop myself being on this endless chase and also feeling like a failure and just not good enough?"

I sense among men, and certainly in my own journey, the magnitude of unfulfilled feelings successful people experience is down to looking outside for validation. At the core level, validation provides acceptance, belonging and safety. And maybe mottoes such as, "Better never stops," is us lost on the roundabout of trying to soothe or fulfill those deeper parts of us. Yet we aren't aware that we're pouring water into a colander instead of a glass.

Reason 2 - What Other People Think

This has plagued me for so long. There seems a separation between the what drives the actions versus the feelings the men behind sports seek. Most men want clarity. They want peace from the constant need to keep doing and achieving, and they want to live their life for themselves. Until now, they've been following a path that's been defined by the perception of what other people think or by their own lack of self worth and compassion. And it was exactly the same for me in my career too. Low self worth was a huge limiter for me.

"I'm a terrible people pleaser. I'm not an aggressive person. I shrink back from conflict, which has led to me being bullied at times. I felt the environment wasn't one in which I could voice my concerns to people."

Reason 3 - Lack of Voice

There are huge assumptions being made that standing for what you want based on your values will be perceived as negative. Many men in sports feel they can't express any professional concerns or unhappiness. They feel that if they do, they'll lose their job. And we all know there's such massive high job insecurity and many people waiting in line for that top job to come up. And I remember having over a hundred people apply for one position that we advertised.

"I feel I can't speak up about something I feel isn't right. There's a connotation, if I don't like it, then lump it. There's a high job insecurity with not being able to speak up about something I feel isn't right. I feel a lot of my worth is not associated with me. From what I see, high-performance sport rather from a political standpoint is very frustrating."

All of this leads to unshaped personal boundaries.

Part 2: 5 Tips to Help You Reconnect with Harmony Between Work and Life

So if you want to go from work having a big social cost to a job where you're invested and able to have a good harmony between your work and your social life so that you can have a life with less sacrifices and feel happy and enjoyment, listen up.

1) Values

The first one is values. Do you even know them? Values are the compass that allow you to choose the direction of your life that aligns with you, that aligns what's truly important to you. They help you construct goals that drive your actions in those directions. Goals are different. Values cannot be achieved. They are just simply a way of living. You embody it.

And although values are by definition considered to be important, such as having downtime, spending time with your family, partner, whatever it is, our behavior is often not consistent with our values. We work during the evenings. We work longer hours. We sacrifice our personal life to maintain the roles that we're in.

And these factors often consist of patterns of behavior and thinking that negatively affect our wellbeing, producing emotions like fear, anxiety, and stress. In order to decrease the discrepancy between values and actual values lived, it's important to create awareness of the discrepancy in the first place.

So what are three values that you want to embody?

If you're unclear, investing the time and energy to know this will pay you back tenfold.

2) Decompression Strategy

Have you got one when you leave work? If you haven't got a conscious process, you'll never create separation from your work life and personal life. And this doesn't have to be complicated. Simple practices including turning your work phone off after 7:00 PM and back on 8:30 in the morning. Moving your body in some way, getting into nature, connecting with your partner, whether that's spiritually, emotionally or physically. Breath work practice, or defining the three most important tasks that you need to achieve for the next day to be a success. Just write them down, the three most important things.

So when you get into work, you'll know that once you've ticked them off, the chances are you'll achieve them and you'll do more work. Whether it's programming, whether it's planning, whatever it is, be super clear what you need to achieve the next day for it to be a success.

And simply how you're affecting your neurophysiology to create a powerful reset of your biology. Thinking of your vagus nerve tone, heart rate variability, blood pressure.

All these things that you deal with on a daily basis, how can you apply them to yourself?

3) Clarity with Your Role

Without having total clarity on direction or other staff's involvement in what is perceived to be your role, it can lead to a lack of direction, regarding what you're supposed to be doing or what you're supposed to be leading on.

This could be due to a lack of trust from those in positions above you or a whole host of other reasons. Or your own expectations and understanding don't match the reality of your day to day.

• What pressures are you putting on yourself?
• What do you need to do to get clarity on your role and the expectations of you and those that you work with?

4) Don't Assume

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in. Simple truth is without actively seeking to challenge your assumptions, you create huge blind spots in seeing how your thoughts, feelings, and actions influence your life and those that matter around you.

What are you assuming and of whom?

Sport can so often be perceived as 100% committal 24/7. You need to be first in last out to be a successful and loyal member of the MDT. But know that that is a myth or a story that many performance staff that I talk to accept, believe, and surrender to without truly reflecting on it or why that is even true in the first place.

And this comes back down to clarity. What are your expectations of you? Who defines that? What jobs are you adding to for yourself, and what are you avoiding?

5) What Am I Pretending Not to Know?

This is one of the tougher reflections I guide coaches through because what it's really asking is for you to look at the options you're choosing to ignore. Most notably that the position you are in that's leading you to feel so out of balance, low energy and lonely may have run its course, and it's time for you to move on to other opportunities, other jobs, other places, maybe a new career.

This requires you to look at yourself with authenticity and courage because specific limiting beliefs are more personal and very, very often old stories laid down in our childhood. And this is why my focus is looking at the man behind the role because it's these hidden limitations that govern the thoughts, feelings, and actions, which so often make it challenging to maintain harmony in life.

How does this show up for you?

What is the cost of this for you in your life?

Please let me know.