March is a busy month for people who are active and love to run. The LA Marathon is an activity that many love to join and participate in. The LA Marathon has literally thousands of people of all ages participating. They run or walk from Dodgers Stadium to Santa Monica. The dedication to be able to finish 26.2 miles is an accomplishment many achieve. Why talk about the LA Marathon? It’s a great example of how being active can be fun and healthy. Being active is good for your health because it improves your muscles, energy, and brain health. Being active improves your everyday activities by bringing the focus as well as the calm exercise gives us to those daily tasks. Most importantly for many it helps them lose weight.
Being active also includes an aspect of being social with others. To me being active is an important thing in my life. It means that participating in something that you enjoy doing like playing a sport, going on a hike, exploring your neighborhood, or even joining the walking challenge at work. It’s an activity that brings people together and is something that can become part of your routine. For example, a walking challenge at work will encourage people to join teams, work together, motivate each other to accomplish their goals, and compete against others. Participating in a challenge encourages people to get creative on how to be active and get their steps in. When you join a team, it encourages you to compete against each other and work as a team.. To have a strong team, the team must socialize with each other and work together to accomplish the mission and win as a team.
Working as a team takes more than one person's effort and dedication. A team-based approach is working together toward a common goal. Working as a team we must be able to interact, listen, and validate the other members of the team. Communication becomes an important tool when interacting with others because we are taking the time to have a conversation with someone. We can talk about all the negatives of how a team can struggle, but for today let's focus on the positives. Being able to have positive communication with your team means that we are working on the same goals, working together at problem-solving, supporting each other, and encouraging each other to accomplish our goals. This will be important because it will relieve stress on the individual while reminding you that you have someone that has your back.
If you are currently working with a team or participating in a team activity there are a couple of things that you can do to increase your team morale. The one I suggest is to talk to each other. Talking to each other will allow you to express how you are feeling about the things that are working and not working for the team. This will allow you to explore and contribute to creating a plan for working as a team and improving the areas where the team is struggling. For example, maybe this will encourage you to run more, support others, or be able to work with others. Communication can be an important step in working as a team. I encourage everyone to practice this because we cannot assume what each person is thinking and/or feeling.
I was able to share how important it is to be active by running, socializing with others, working as a team, and joining a team. My suggestion for you is to put yourself out there and give it a try. If you don’t try or express how you are feeling, then how is change going to happen? Change is difficult, but change can open a lot of opportunities for you.
-Ricardo Sigala, Penny Lane Centers
