It is believed that sports play a vital role in shaping one’s life. Not just personally but also professionally. Each sport teaches you different values and Badminton is no exception! What started as a summer camp went on to become a life changer for me. I learned Discipline, concentration and team spirit, and these values have stayed with me for years to come and have helped me a lot in my profession. I believe that a disciplined approach to games and life will bring victory at the end of both. If one had to start with a sport, I’d certainly recommend Badminton because it is quite easy. But you can’t learn it in a day, that is for sure. You have to be disciplined enough to keep trying to make something out of those early sessions. In the beginning stages, your hand-eye coordination will be tested. And whether it develops or stagnates depends on the second value that I mentioned-Concentration. Once you have put in a decent amount of hours with self-discipline to the game, you will be treated to a sense of intense concentration, which absorbs you completely into the here and now-almost in a meditative state. Once you learn the technique, you could play for hours and not realize how many sets have gone by. Similarly, in your professional life, once you learn the nitty-gritty of a job, you will start enjoying it. And no job would seem like a burden when you enjoy it. Every sub-task of a job requires your concentration to avoid errors and playing a sport helps you inculcate that habit. Badminton leaves no room for error. Being a rallying sport, badminton forces you to concentrate because a split-second of diversion would result in a lost point. That’s precisely what happens at work too. You could be working on a presentation and a moment of loss of concentration would result in errors creeping in, and having to re-do the entire presentation. Many people do not consider badminton to be a team sport. I beg to differ. You could appear to be a singles player who’s on your own, but is it really possible without a team behind you? Ever heard of a Coach, Fitness Coach, Therapist, etc? Rings a bell? If you are an amateur, you will still need an opponent to better yourself. In the professional sphere, I might be the leader but I need to lead others to help me reach that goal. No achievement is my achievement alone. Yes, I might be the one who delegated the work to the right people but the hard work is theirs too. I have learnt to enjoy and revel in the success of the Team rather than my own. And that celebration is much sweeter than the celebration of my own triumph. We never really realize the importance of a sport in our lives until we actually take a moment and look back at the source of our values. Not everything is taught to us at home, some things are taught to us while fighting our battles on the court.
Parvathy Premkrishnan Manakkal is a Radio Journalist by qualification and an HR Officer by profession. Although at the receiving end of people's extreme emotions, she's in a happy place when she is able to capture thoughts, opinions, observations, and emotions in written words.
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