Are Athletes Who Think Hard Work is Fun Crazy?
Hard work is hard. Blood, sweat and tears. There is no sugar coating this. So how could this be fun? It’s a fact that some athletes have fun through the blood, sweat, and tears of training and competing to be the best. Are these athletes crazy? How could anyone have fun as their body and mind is being completely beat up by adversity, pain, and drudgery?
The truth is that adversity, pain, and drudgery is not fun if you need to be happy to have fun. However, everyone doesn’t need to be happy to have fun.
The mindset of someone who has fun working hard through adversity, pain, and drudgery for long hours orients their view of the work with a mindset of satisfaction instead of happiness.
According to research done by the winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics psychologist Daniel Kahneman, happiness and satisfaction are two distinct things:
Happiness is a momentary experience that arises spontaneously and is fleeting. Meanwhile, satisfaction is a long-term feeling, built over time and based on achieving goals and building the kind of life you admire…
…Satisfaction is retrospective. Happiness occurs in real time.
Therefore, athletes who view fun through the lens of happiness can never see hard work as fun. On the other hand, athletes who view fun through satisfaction embrace hard work as being fun.
So, when an athlete tells you that hard work is fun, they aren’t crazy. Instead, they are determined to live a satisfying life.