One of the summer’s biggest events will draw to a close tonight. We’ve been fascinated with the beautiful game and marvelling at some of the fittest athletes in sport for nearly a month now. At this moment in time, it really is survival of the fittest.

While all the other teams make their way back home from their World Cup campaigns, only the finalists remain. After long domestic seasons playing club football, and the entire World Cup process itself, it’s a wonder the players that remain in action for tonight’s clash can even stand up at all, let alone play the performances of their lives.

There is anticipation in the air. We are fascinated and entertained by these men. They have captured the world’s attention. Like the gladiators of ancient Rome, footballers have helped us forget our troubles just for a little while, to drop what we were doing and stand united, all watching and discussing the same thing at the same time. It’s a strange sense of unity, and it doesn’t even matter all that much whose national teams are playing, we still want to know who will win.

Some may be able to relate to the players on the pitch more than others. For fitness enthusiasts, this time of year coincides with the cessation of pre-summer exercise programmes and routines. Many of those who began down the path of better health and fitness and more attractive bodies all those months ago, will be have paid their dues.

As the sun shines ever hotter, even mornings and evenings offer little respite from the heat. It’s difficult to get away from it, and even harder to keep up the training. The distractions start to crop up too. The summer social scene is getting under way and perhaps we quite simply have slightly better things to do with our time.

Gyms are now beginning their downward spiral to eerie silence. Unless they are willing to spend a fortune on running air conditioning at the time of year when least people exercise, then they see nothing but the back of our heels; a mass exodus to the cafes and beaches.

The trials and trubulations of the World Cup may have provided their own unique doses of drama, but perhaps your training was no plain sailing either. Perhaps you faced boundaries and overcame them, perhaps there were dramas, pain, and frustration. Perhaps your motivation soared at times and slipped at others. What it really comes down to is whether you’ve succeeded in achieving your goals, the things you set out to do when you embarked on this journey.

Some are beginning to relish the taste of victory, of achievement, while others will be choking on the bitterness of defeat, and what better time than this to reflect on winning and losing when the stakes are high?

For half of the players on the pitch tonight there will be joyous celebrations. Awaiting the rest is the agony of defeat. You could say that our reactions to winning and losing are what defines our true characters. Athletes know that the road to victory is paved with many defeats, and every man on that pitch tonight will have learned that lesson at some point in his career.

Every time we fail to reach our goals, we have a treasure chest of valuable lessons to learn. If you haven’t achieved your goals at this time of year, indulge in a little reflection, something those players are surely well used to. Why did you not achieve your goals? Where did you go wrong? What could you do differently next time?

Asking these difficult questions might seem harder than wallowing in defeat or self-pity, but it’s perhaps one of the most useful applications of your time since setting your goals in the first place. Only once we have figured out what a problem is can we go about trying to fix it. Maybe you didn’t really want it bad enough, maybe you let laziness get the better of you one time too many, maybe you took it a little too easy during your workouts a little too often. Maybe you let things get in the way that were lesser priorities, maybe you can just never quite get down to finishing what you started.

Whatever the case, finding out will enable you to devise strategies to deal with similar pitfalls in the future. Now you have knowledge and experience you can tap into. Every time you fail, you can get a little bit better, that’s how cham­pions are made. That’s how every man who lifts that World Cup trophy tonight got there.

For many, the body of our dreams and a perfect bill of health are more precious than a trophy, but the mechanisms by which we earn these things are the same. For those who achieved their goals ahead of summer 2014, give yourself a good pat on the back and aim higher than ever for your next cycle of goals. If you didn’t, then take comfort in a valuable set of lessons learned, and come back stronger than ever.

matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt

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