Koučuj sám sebe Život je vzdělávání
www.posiv.cz ǀ 73
POSITIV MAN
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.
It is very important to know what I am
good at, what I am bad at, and to have
proper self-reecon.
Marian Jelínek is the former long-me personal coach
of Jaromír Jágr, a hockey coach, and former assistant
coach of the Czech naonal ice hockey team, with whom
he won the World Championship tle. Holding
a PhDr. and a Ph.D. in kinanthropology, he is widely
recognised as an expert in mental coaching. He lectures
at universies and companies both in the Czech Republic
and abroad and is the author of more than ten books on
movaon and personal development.