Coach Yourself Life Is Education

What can be considered praise or success? For Marian Jelínek, PhDr., Ph.D., what truly matters is being able to say at the end of the day that the entire day, a particular lecture, or the work itself had meaning. We explore how he found his way to sports psychology, what mentally drains today’s managers, and how to break free from it.

Do you primarily focus on individuals or entire teams, whether in sport or in the business environment?

I focus on working with the subjective world of people. I do not distinguish between an athlete and a businessman. If I were to put it into percentages, it would be fifty-fifty. I work with companies and sports teams as groups, but also with individuals on a one-to-one basis. And there is a third area as well — Education, because I actively teach at the university level. My work week is divided between companies, sport and education.

Could you outline what your work week looks like? How do you manage the entire organisation of it all?

Most of my work week is built around things arranged largely by my colleague, especially in terms of scheduling, time management, and handling requests that come in from companies, sports clubs, or parents of athletes through the website.

Then there is another group that I manage myself, and those are elite athletes. With them, for example, I arrange phone calls directly, because my clients also include players from the American National Hockey League and similar competitions. In terms of organisation, it is probably around 80% handled by my agent and 20% by me personally.

What criteria do you use when choosing your clients?

I do not really select clients according to strict criteria. You simply have to connect with the person in some way, and that usually only becomes clear after the first meeting, which is why I try to meet them personally. Sometimes my colleague already evaluates whether I am the right fit for a particular client and whether I am actually capable of helping them.

Do you encounter parents of young athletes who approach you with problems concerning their sporting children and believe that once they contact you, everything will be fixed as if by magic?

That is, of course, the wrong way to look at it, but unfortunately it is quite common. Not only because of that, I tend to work more with older athletes who are already responsible for themselves. It is a “cleaner” relationship — just you and the athlete, whereas with younger clients it becomes a triangle of athlete, parent, and you. With younger clients, I usually refer them to my students at Newton University, specifically from the postgraduate programme in Mental Coaching for Managers and Athletes.

What is the best way to introduce a problem to you?

Clearly defined requirements work best for me, because then I know exactly what is expected of me, and I can look for a clear path — or rather a method — of how to approach it. Or I can also say: “I’m sorry, but I cannot help you with this. I do not know how.”

That way, the expectations of both sides align, and there can be genuine satisfaction from the work that has been done. And that is really what we want — What gives our work meaning. Ideally, the client is able to identify the barriers holding them back within their own subjective world and wants to remove them.

Can you identify what is killing the mental health of today’s modern managers in medium-sized and large companies?

One of the major killers is an unhealthy fixation on results — on measurable performance indicators. I have to win, I have to achieve this. It is a very common situation: a strong emotional attachment to the goal, but very little emotional attachment to the journey itself. The first step towards solving this is to clearly realise that you are too attached to the outcome without having an emotional connection to the process.

That is also why self-awareness is so important. We often focus on personal development, yet we do not truly know ourselves. It is crucial to understand what we are good at, what we are not good at — In other words, to have proper self-reflection. Based on that, we can then decide how to move forward and whether we actually want to change something or not.

So, if a manager has accurate self-reflection, they can define a path towards changing or improving a particular issue. The problem comes when someone believes they are good when they are not, or thinks they are working hard when in reality they are not, and so on.

What brings you joy in life?

I love life. So, in a way, life itself! Besides that, many other things — For example, my work. Of course, there are aspects of it that are more enjoyable than others, but I genuinely enjoy what I do. That is probably why I work relatively a lot, including weekends.

And where do you recharge your inner batteries?

My work involves a great deal of travelling. I enjoy that part a bit less, but I have learned how to make good use of the time and make it more pleasant. I coach over the phone or do interviews while travelling. It also gives me space to think and organise my thoughts. In those moments, I recharge the energy that I can later give to my clients. So I also need to spend part of my day simply with myself — Recharging through reading books or doing sport.

These days, you are also very well known thanks to the digital world. How do you view social media? Does it ever become too much, to the point where you need a detox?

It is like everything else — Moderation is key. It is an amazing servant, but a terrible master. Some of my digital activities are prepared by my students; I personally am not very active in this area. I do not invest in advertising or campaigns.

I even have a digital presence that is not actually mine — For example, a fan club or a Facebook account. I only manage one Instagram account, even though there is another one under my name that does not belong to me. I do not need any digital detox because I genuinely spend very little time there and do not really create content. I am comfortable with it that way, and I have no desire to spend more time on social media or devote myself to it any further.

When did you first say to yourself: “Now I know what I want to be and what I want to do”?

As a little boy, I dreamed of becoming a hockey player, but then I suffered an injury at the age of twenty-three and that dream disappeared. Still, I wanted to remain involved in sport. I managed to become a coach and experienced many wonderful things, including coaching the national team, but life gradually led me in a slightly different direction.

It was always the same coaching cycle — You build a team, the season ends, click, summer training begins, click — And when you go through that for the fifteenth time, the impulses start to fade.

I come from a family of doctors, and I had always been fascinated by how the brain works. That is probably why I slowly shifted my focus and began taking a deeper interest in the elements of athletic performance connected to the athlete’s subjective world — Their emotions. So my career was certainly never planned out in a way where, at twenty years old, I knew I wanted to specialise in sports psychology. Definitely not.

Where do you draw inspiration for your work from?

I draw inspiration from life itself, from books, from meeting interesting people, from travelling, and from studying. I see education as an inseparable part of life. I genuinely enjoy it — I love reading, studying, and searching for new ideas.

In fact, life itself is an education, because you are constantly observing, perceiving, and learning. I cannot imagine ever reaching a point where I would stop learning altogether. That seems absurd to me. For me, it is completely natural to read a few pages of a book every day and learn something new — Whether from the people I coach or from conferences where I find inspiration.

Where do you see yourself in five years’ time? Do you ever think about that?

Not really, to be honest. Five years feels too far away for me, so I tend to plan in much shorter intervals. Professionally, for example, I would like to finish writing a book this year about self-coaching. The book should inspire readers to realise that, in many areas of life, almost anyone can effectively coach themselves. That is something I have been noticing in practice — People have started to take an interest in it.

Who do you think a coach is?

That depends on the criteria you use. A coach can be someone who officially holds the qualification. But a coach is also, in essence, anyone who works with the subjective world of people. In a way, every parent, teacher, manager, or doctor is partly a coach — Simply anyone who works with people.

The word “coach” itself dates back to ancient Greece, where a coach guided students through their studies, whether in a lyceum or an academy. I think all of us could benefit from adopting certain coaching techniques or approaches in our own lives.

If you had to invest all of your free time tomorrow into learning one skill, what would it be?

I think it would be self-control. Self-control — The ability to manage your subjective world, unwanted thoughts, and your inner twin. That is something I study and find immensely fascinating.

In the world of sport, what immediately comes to mind is the ability to control fears and anxieties — The ones athletes face either during a game or before it begins.