**Abstract**

People have been searching for the good life or personal well-being since the ancient Greeks. During this same period, people have been expressing themselves through sport, participating in games of athleticism as a means of discovering who they are and reaching their potential. This chapter examines the relationship between sports and a flourishing life. By examining sports as a mechanism of achieving specific traits of positive psychology associated with flourishing, the researcher is able to determine that sports are a matrix in which human potential can be nourished.

**Keywords:** sports, well-being, flourishing, potential, health

### **1. What is flourishing?**

Flourishing is the pinnacle of human potential. Sometimes referred to as self-actualization, excellence, well-being, or happiness, a flourishing life is what people strive to attain. Flourishing is an optimal human functioning. It occurs when an individual fits their environment so they can function more efficiently and effectively. Fitness is a sport-related term regarding how well individuals fit their environment. When it's a good fit, individuals are more able to overcome resistance, hence why the term fitness has been adopted by resistance training athletes. When an individual's fitness is poor, they are not adequately fit for their environment and will have more difficulty facing resistance or adversity.

An individual's fitness is relevant for every aspect of life and easily identifiable in sports. For instance, some athletes are naturally better at power sports, and some are better at endurance sports. When an athlete identifies their innate abilities, if they participate in sports highlighting those abilities, they will be a better fit and reach a higher potential. Flourishing is significantly influenced by how well an individual understands themselves and their situation.

If you go back to the time of the ancient Greeks, the philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) believed that Eudaimonic well-being or engaging in something of value, a long-term investment rather than short-term pleasure, fulfills our potential. Aristotle believed we should do things worth doing, and when we act in such a manner, we may flourish [1]. Things worth doing are opportunities in alignment with our values. Values are deeply held beliefs that establish our character. When an individual lives in accordance with their values, they fit their environment, they are being their authentic self. Their life is in order and they have a set objective that makes sense for them. Living in this manner is often referred to as living with a purpose.

For the reason that flourishing is specific to the individual, it is considered subjective, i.e., your well-being is specific to you and your needs, it is not a universal constant [1, 2]. What works for you, may not work for anyone else and vice versa. This concept is known as subjective well-being (SWB) and is understood as your life satisfaction is the result of all your positive emotions minus your negative emotions:

$$\text{Ep - En} = \text{S} \tag{1}$$

How you interpret your emotions and come to your unique conclusion is determined by your uniqueness as an individual and how you react as an individual to social and environmental situations. In other words, according to SWB, your well-being is idiosyncratic.

If flourishing is indeed a subjective measure of how well we strive toward things worth doing, then the activities we fill our days with should be purposefully aimed at self-improvement. The argument presented in this chapter is sport is an activity that provides opportunity to invest in developing traits that enrich well-being, and although sports may seem to be a pastime, sports are actually a breeding ground for human flourishing.

The remainder of this chapter will examine three concepts of positive psychology associated with flourishing through the lens of sport in an attempt to highlight the value of engaging in sport as a mechanism for reaching human potential.

#### **1.1 Positive psychology and human potential via sport**

Sports have deep roots in personal development. The word sport evolved out of the word disport, which is the combination of dis- meaning *away* or *depart* and portare, meaning *carry*. Sport means to carry away from something or break apart (de- and part) from it. Sports, from a philosophical perspective, carry people away from their current sense of self so they can break apart from it then rebuild stronger. Similar to the etymology of sport, the word exercise which is a subdiscipline of sports originated from ex- meaning *out of* and arcere meaning *constraint*. In other words, exercise means to remove our constraints or liberate the body from itself.

Sport and self-improvement are innately linked. Specifically, as a means of replacing our old self with an evolved version through physical effort. During sport, people are burning off their old self through sweat and hard work and replacing it with a stronger body and mind as we adapt to the stimulus. This scientific principle is represented in mythology as the symbolic phoenix burning to ashes in flames and being reborn stronger. Prior to the scientific method, storytelling was the primary way of explaining the world. Powerful stories such as the phoenix stick with us through the generations because they metaphorically represent what individuals are going through. The phoenix is a symbol that athletes enact as they chase their potential, burn off their weaker self, and replace it with a stronger being through sports.

In this chapter, we will examine three concepts of positive psychology that are associated with human potential and flourishing through the lens of sport. These concepts are PERMA, self-determination theory, and core self-evaluation theory [1, 3]. We will then examine underlying denominators between the concepts and discuss a generalized concept for extracting potential out of sport.

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**Figure 1.** *PERMA image.*

*Sports as a Mechanism for Reaching Your Potential: The Relationship between Positive Psychology…*

One of the founding fathers of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, in his book *Flourish*, shares a model for flourishing known as PERMA. PERMA is an acronym capturing what Seligman deems to be the five components of human flourishing, positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment

Sports are a catalyst for action. With sports ranging from soccer, rock-climbing, darts, and e-sports, sports are as diverse as the people participating in them. With that said, sports are a means by which people voluntarily create, problem solve, and act within a boundary of agreed upon rules and receive feedback as a result of those actions. This deems sports as an appropriate mechanism to measure the five

Uusiautti et al. [5], in an attempt to find a solution to the problem of boys' decline

Positive emotions have been shown to broaden the scope of attention and cognition which increases well-being [7]. These findings are reason to invest in activities that stimulate positive emotions. Sports activate your entire spectrum of emotions. When athletes deem a stressor as within their ability and an opportunity for growth, positive emotions follow. As athletes develop their skills and participate at a level of competition appropriate for their current ability, they will eventually see progress,

There is a saying, "no one has ever felt bad after a workout." This axiom although anecdotal is a remark regarding the satisfaction people have after engaging in something as physically demanding as sport. People who create a lifestyle involving higher

and positive emotions will arise from seeing an improvement in their sport.

in success and engagement in schoolwork in Finland, examined the implications of sport as a method of increasing the five components of PERMA. Their findings suggest that sports do indeed increase the traits of PERMA and thus well-being. The researchers' aim is by increasing the young males' well-being; the boys will be positive contributors to their families, communities, and society. Using PERMA as a lens by which we can analyze sports' contribution to human well-being is a justifiable means of acknowledging the correlation between sports and human potential [6].

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91417*

**2. Sports and PERMA**

[4] (**Figure 1**).

elements of PERMA.

**2.1 Positive emotions and sports**

*Sports as a Mechanism for Reaching Your Potential: The Relationship between Positive Psychology… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91417*
