Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, each morning a somewhat younger Coach Frank would drive via a “corner shop” in Ballarat, Australia and buy the daily newspapers. There was no internet, (shock, horror), so one watched the news on television or one read the print newspapers to find out the comings and goings in the world. I used to buy two, sometimes three newspapers a day. One local paper, one tabloid newspaper that had sports results, and one somewhat more “high brow”, which would have a little more political discussion, and a discussion of events of the day, rather than merely reporting them. I recall, when something came as being interesting, or inspirational, I would cut it out. As both a High School teacher and a coach at that time, I did quite a bit of cutting out, not just of things that appealed to my own sensibilities, but for my high school language arts class and coaching pupils.
A hundred years later, or something like that, I do the same thing, but differently. I have my set series of websites that I check in on, perhaps not every day, but every now and again, to get news, information, research, inspiration and amusement. In the squash world, I don’t look at much anymore. I do look at the results of major events, but that mostly comes from social media, so I mostly look outside the sport for my inspiration.
Take home message
Cultivate a list of constructive influences on the web or on social media. What makes you want to train, what makes you think more deeply about your daily decisions or makes you just simply happy? In as much as we have a daily food diet, we also have a daily diet of information. We are what we eat, we are also mentally what we expose ourselves to… so it’s worth searching for inspiration to make us better versions of ourselves.
p.s. and if you'd like suggestions - come chat to me at training and I'll give you some ideas!
