ACHIEVING OUR BEST SELF

Achieving our Best Self
Victoria Díaz-Zorita
The answer he gave me to the question on how important is motivation in situations
such as the preparation for a marathon offered me plenty of new information I did not pay
attention at in the past. To start with, in his answer, he made emphasis on fears and how
these affect the person involved. I learnt that one can measure the size of the challenge
based on the fears of each person, the more exposed you are, the harder it is and for
instance a much higher amount of motivation is needed. It was then I remembered
something mentioned on a video I saw called “Fear on the stages of life” guided by Dr.
Roberto Perez 16 . In the beginning of this documental, Roberto Perez referred to fear as
something that will try a person’s personal consistency, not an enemy. I consider this
extremely important because I assume that fear itself can be considered a type of
motivation as the fact of getting over them is a great challenge which can help us get
stronger each day.
As from internal and external motivation and how each of them is present in runners,
what Hugo mentioned is that in fact it is completely created by the athlete but the role that
plays the coach, family, friends, etc. and how they go along with the challenge or confronts
it, will affect the runner’s motivation turning it into something positive or into something
negative. What this means is that in the case the family and friends understand this passion
and urge of running a marathon, this will help the runner very much. This will allow
him/her to be 100% focused on each workout as well as on the race with nothing pushing
him/her backwards as complains or demanded attention from other people as a
consequence of so much dedication to this challenge. What Hugo Bressani made emphasis
on, using as well information from personal experiences, is that when races are too hard at
the point of even considering to quit half way, what most inspires the athlete is not
completing the race as said before but to honor in some way all the people who supported
and helped him throughout the whole journey.
This perspective justifies what Luz Maria Francione said related to what motivates
her as she probably does not see it from her position but actually her surroundings
influence her a lot. Besides, something she mentioned in the interview is that her husband
is an athlete as well so at least both of them understand what the other is going through at
the moment of preparing for a race. For instance, this can be related to what I mentioned in
the previous paragraph on how our surroundings can motivate us still if we do not notice.
16 International speaker on ethics, personal development, communication and team work and integral
leadership’s values
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