«Life requires us to move on, no matter what happens; I discovered it when I was little. My father died when I was 15 years old. He had turned 45. He seemed super unfair to me. Later, he has happened to me more times: when I stayed in a wheelchair, at the age of 19; when I had to be hospitalized… That’s why I don’t believe in philosophy happy flower, that ‘nothing happens, move on’. We must respect our emotional times. Of course, then you have to ask yourself: ‘Are you interested in staying in that moment of unhappiness?’ Maybe you do it yourself or maybe you need help, but when you hit rock bottom you have to get back on your feet.
Put yourself in the center of happiness
«My philosophy of life is that you have to put yourself in the center of the spiral of happiness so that you can then make others happy. Sometimes I have been told that it is a selfish attitude, but I see it as something similar to the use of oxygen masks in the event of depressurization of an airplane cabin: you have to put the mask on yourself first so that you can put it on your child later and save it, even if your body asks you otherwise. If you lose consciousness, you kill him. You have to take good care of yourself before you can take care of others.”
«We live in an eternal search for happiness, without daring to recognize that we are already happy anyway. It seems that we are never satisfied with what we have. And, although I am very ambitious and always want more, I also believe that you have to take advantage of the opportunities that life offers you and give thanks. I start from the simplest: ‘Am I alive? Well, now I have a reason to be happy. And from there you grow. Things like getting up in the morning and my 12-year-old son telling me: ‘Oh, what a beautiful thing!’ What more can I ask for?
“I started working as coach when I was pregnant with my son. It is a process in which I accompany you so that you discover what your tools are to advance. Without really intervening. What I usually find is many people who tell me that they don’t know where to go. That happens because it is difficult for us to know ourselves, to dedicate time to see what is inside us. The problem is that sometimes what we discover is scary and we ask ourselves: ‘Oysters! Am I really like this?’ But you have to understand it to be able to intervene. Helping others is how I give myself feedback, but I’m not ‘super happy’ all day, I also have my moments».
Mental health at the Tokyo Games
“For many years it has been a taboo, so the withdrawal of the gymnast Simone Biles seemed very brave to me. When you are a high competition athlete you experience a lot of stress. People expect everything from you: the press, the sponsors, the federations… You prepare yourself psychologically, but sometimes there is something that goes out of balance and your entire balance is dismantled. It happens a lot when you have to face withdrawal. They can be a thousand years demanding you give up and give up, and come medals. And suddenly, in a year you have disappeared from public life and nobody remembers you. It has been difficult for many athletes to understand it.
«It has always been another of the great taboos of elite sport. The regulations already forbid it but, until a few years ago, at the signing of club transfers, sometimes they made you sign that you were not going to get pregnant. He has never done anything like this to men. And it also happens in companies, which still ask you, depending on how old you are, if you are married or if you plan to have a family. Sometimes we women have to see ourselves in problems where there are none. Also at the time, maternity leave was not such, but leave due to injury ».
«I don’t believe in the ‘happy flower’ philosophy, that nothing happens. You have to respect the emotional times»
“I don’t want to stay in sadness. It has happened to me now with the subject of Ukraine. I decided that I could do something and contacted an athlete who had been my rival for many years to help her out: Olena Akopyan. She is in a wheelchair and has two children. She lived in Brovary, 20 kilometers from kyiv, and when the bombing started she had to drive for hours to reach a Paralympic center where she was supposed to be safer. But then bombs started falling there too. I talked to her and we saw that it was time to get out of it, so she took the car and came here. They are already in Zaragoza but it has been very hard: the stress of the trip, crossing the border, they couldn’t get money… she is a very brave woman».
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.