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Glen Dhliwayo Cool Feature
The sporting world offers us mundane entertainment and experience, though profound if treated thoughtfully.
Several games, especially ball games, have teams comprising 11 people on the playing field and some substitute players that sit on the bench although rugby of course has more. This is a lesson that is very useful to life as it mirrors the way the game of life is played.

You will often encounter a scenario in the sporting world where a player is injured either during training or even during the course of the match. If you realise what happens on such occasions then you will grasp this significant life lesson, the match will not be delayed, stopped or postponed because a player is down with an injury. This is regardless of the status of the player.

The player might be the playmaker or the star of the said team, but that does not warrant the forfeiture of a match. The most that the referee can do in such a circumstance is to momentarily stop the match so that the player will either limp off the ground or carried off the ground depending on the gravity of the injury.

What do we learn from this sporting illustration? The very apparent lesson there is that life does not stop because you call in down with an injury. Life simply moves on. Despite the situation that you land yourself in, life will not stop or be delayed because you have reported an injury. You are the one who will either limp off the arena of life or you will leave the pitch on a stretcher.

Do not expect life to stop around you because you are experiencing difficulties – that is inevitably impossible. People might offer you sympathy and momentarily stop to commiserate with you but they will soon resume the game of life, leaving you to watch from the sidelines.

So what do you do when you find yourself injured in life?
Realise that life will not stop as such it is important to quickly nurse your injury and get back into the fray. The idea of entitlements never works in life because you are not entitled to any special treatment regardless of your status, position or lineage. You cannot claim that the world stops and pays homage to you until you have recovered. That is a fallacy!

The players who get injured will come up with a workout plan with the team physiotherapist so that they quickly return to match fitness. You should aim to do the same with your life.

Find people dedicated to bringing you back to a competitive state. You do not get back to winning ways by sulking about the injury or complaining about the unfairness you were meted that resulted in your injury.

While on injury take the time to look at your game and analyse it so that you are able to tell the gaps in your play. Most clever players come back better into the fray after injuries because they take the time to reflect and then they learn the new skills required for them to take their match a notch higher.

If you just focus on the injury alone you won’t do yourself any favours. Most people do not realise that the time they are down is the time that they have to learn all they need to bounce back better and stronger.

The reason is simply because people are not worried about people who are down, that is the reality of it, their attention is on those who are at the peak of the performance.

That slump in attention will give you the free room to focus on your life without the pressure of people looking on you. This will help you a great deal to reinvent yourself and to coin new skills that will make sure that you announce your return in pomp and style.

Finally, injury time should be minimised as much as possible because you allow those who play the same position as yours to prove their worth and therefore to grab your position.

Being given the opportunity to start is a rare privilege in this cut-throat competitive world where everyone else is trying to prove their worth and enhance their recognition.

Take the shortest time possible away so that you do not allow your position to be filled. If you stay away too long someone will get too comfortable in your shoes and it will become difficult to get your shoes back.

So while you need to recover and to get back to your usual fitness do realise that the substitute players have a point to prove.
Injuries are inevitable in life, how we handle them is what determines whether and how we bounce back to winning ways. Winners always know how to claim back their positions.

Till next week, God bless you all. Ciao . . .

 The writer is a motivational teacher. He can be contacted on [email protected]