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Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury

Background: Searching for the meaning of human existence is man’s fundamental orientation. People are free to find meaning in their lives, and while they are not always free to choose the conditions of life, they are free to choose their attitude toward the conditions in which they find themselves....

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Autores principales: Goraczko, Agata, Zurek, Grzegorz, Lachowicz, Maciej, Zurek, Alina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8197014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34070973
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18115563
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author Goraczko, Agata
Zurek, Grzegorz
Lachowicz, Maciej
Zurek, Alina
author_facet Goraczko, Agata
Zurek, Grzegorz
Lachowicz, Maciej
Zurek, Alina
author_sort Goraczko, Agata
collection PubMed
description Background: Searching for the meaning of human existence is man’s fundamental orientation. People are free to find meaning in their lives, and while they are not always free to choose the conditions of life, they are free to choose their attitude toward the conditions in which they find themselves. When people experience an unchangeable situation, the most important thing is the attitude they take toward it. This study aimed to identify the sense of meaning in life among elite athletes after a spinal cord injury (SCI) and to analyze the different aspects contributing to this domain. Methods: The study involved five athletes with at least national-level achievements in sports prior to a SCI. The study consisted of an interview using a communicator and filling out two online questionnaires—a personal questionnaire and the Purpose in Life Scale. Results: Analyzing the quantitative results, four participants achieved results indicating a high sense of meaning in life, while one participant achieved a significantly lower result. Conclusions: What affects one’s purpose in life is not so much the objective physical limitation but how much physicality one perceives to have lost as a result of the injury. Elite athletes stay involved in the sporting environment, which prevents the loss of purpose and maintains a sense of meaning at a high level. Both telling the story of your own illness and listening to the stories of others help the process of self-healing.
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spelling pubmed-81970142021-06-13 Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury Goraczko, Agata Zurek, Grzegorz Lachowicz, Maciej Zurek, Alina Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Background: Searching for the meaning of human existence is man’s fundamental orientation. People are free to find meaning in their lives, and while they are not always free to choose the conditions of life, they are free to choose their attitude toward the conditions in which they find themselves. When people experience an unchangeable situation, the most important thing is the attitude they take toward it. This study aimed to identify the sense of meaning in life among elite athletes after a spinal cord injury (SCI) and to analyze the different aspects contributing to this domain. Methods: The study involved five athletes with at least national-level achievements in sports prior to a SCI. The study consisted of an interview using a communicator and filling out two online questionnaires—a personal questionnaire and the Purpose in Life Scale. Results: Analyzing the quantitative results, four participants achieved results indicating a high sense of meaning in life, while one participant achieved a significantly lower result. Conclusions: What affects one’s purpose in life is not so much the objective physical limitation but how much physicality one perceives to have lost as a result of the injury. Elite athletes stay involved in the sporting environment, which prevents the loss of purpose and maintains a sense of meaning at a high level. Both telling the story of your own illness and listening to the stories of others help the process of self-healing. MDPI 2021-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8197014/ /pubmed/34070973 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18115563 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Goraczko, Agata
Zurek, Grzegorz
Lachowicz, Maciej
Zurek, Alina
Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury
title Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury
title_full Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury
title_fullStr Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury
title_full_unstemmed Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury
title_short Purpose in Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury
title_sort purpose in life of elite athletes after spinal cord injury
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8197014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34070973
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18115563
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