THE EMOTIONAL ASPECT IS STILL IGNORED...WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD!?

By Greg Warburton

This is about what the Evolutionary Sports Collective is already doing that we urge the entire sports world to start doing yesterday. Let’s focus on providing the missing pieces for the half-century old mental-training puzzle.

With a sense of urgency, I point out that our youth live in a destabilized world and some brave young athletes are speaking out, admitting they are mentally and emotionally destabilized, even traumatized, by constant uncertainty and pressure to excel; this mental/emotional energy gets stuck in their body/mind system I emphasize that trying not to think about it or trying to “positive think” their way out of it does not work.

They are, in effect, reminding all that there are missing pieces in the traditional mental-training puzzle. Most notably, there is a lack of emotional and mental fitness support and skill training. Even at elite levels of sport, there remains a dearth of preventive mental-and-emotional fitness skill training. Imagine with me how these courageous young athletes’ lives could have been different. They could have been taught a set of skills to use and practice to dependably mentally and emotionally self-manage all along their performance pathway, no matter what was happening in their lives. That skill set does exist!

Having recently retired from 39 years as professional mental health counselor with abused, neglected and traumatized kids, teens and parents, I understand and support the now surfacing public platform highlighting mental health needs of athletes as we remember they are human beings first. Yet, I also respectfully want to highlight, when the integration of mental and emotional fitness practices being provided by the Evolutionary Sports Collective becomes widely known, all will indeed come to know there is indeed a place where a preventive integrated system of skill practices is being taught. Some new members in our Collective have described their experience with us as a sense of coming home.

I have been collecting major sports news headlines as a clear indicator of the void in prevention service delivery. The headlines reveal news ranging from critical mental health challenges to re-stabilizing and going forward with athletic careers because there are still no comprehensive trainings for managing the mental/emotional impact of one poor performance moment after another.

A sampling of these headlines follows:

New York Times by Christopher Clarey

A Shocking Exit and a Sad Day for Tennis

Naomi Osaka withdraws from the French Open (2021) … stating: Considering Osaka’s prominence and the increased awareness of and sensitivity to athletes’ mental-health challenges… noted too that she had experienced this since the 2018 US Open.

ESPN.com D’Arcy Maine

Simone Biles withdraws from Individual all-around gymnastics competition at Tokyo Olympics to focus on mental well-being.

HR News by Kathy Gurchiek

Make Mental Health a Priority, Olympian Michael Phelps Urges

Once again, imagine with me how these courageous young athletes’ lives could have been different and how, going forward, millions of other athletes can receive mental and emotional fitness training for themselves as whole, magnificent human beings.
Our intention is to reach an ever-growing audience with the news of prevention and thriving no matter what is happening in one’s life…one’s world. These integrated training modalities allow each athlete to reconnect spiritually with their true inner self, learning how to prepare their body/mind system for miracles.

Let’s make 2022 the year that our Evolutionary Sports Collective moves the needle in the sport-performance mental training field for the whole wide world. We invite all readers to consistently send out news to everyone you know about our Collective’s action taking. We are leading-edge practitioner revolutionaries who have been determinedly working, for decades, to expand the traditional mental-training model to focus on the whole person…body-mind-emotions-heart-and-soul training.