Good morning, good afternoon, good evening! My name is Nuno Corte-Real and I was invited to take part in this course. I will talk about a theme we have been investigating a lot at my university.
Firstly, I appreciate the invitation. And, now, I will briefly present myself and the plan. I will start by where I come from, explain a bit, very quickly, and also the reason why I bring this theme here, which Scheilla, who I met in Espírito Santo, I was the co-supervisor of her master's thesis and she is someone that I keep in touch with and sometimes we even try at UFES, we have tried and created some projects that promote physical exercise and practicing sports along the students of the Federal University of Espírito Santo.
At this point we already use what we have been taught, some theories, specially the transtheoretical model on stages of change which I will talk a bit about and, overall, matters related to motivation. What motivates us to behave in a certain way and what prevents us from behaving in other ways. Specially behaviors related to being more or less active which is the central theme here.
And now I will share my screen. Done! Starting by where I come from, this is Porto, a city in the north of Portugal and this city has a good mixture between classic, as a city with a lot of history, as you know, and modern, as we can see here above, the Casa da Música, that is if a meteorite had fell in that part of the city, and the Drgon stadium, where the Porto football club plays.
Therefore, this city is able to very pleasantly combine classic aspects, its history, and modern aspects. I work at the sport faculty, a faculty with a lot of history, with great placements in both national and international rankings. It is indeed very fortunate, our students have good conditions to practice different types of sport, and we have a great and diverse range of undergraduate license degrees and master's degrees.
And there is, now speaking directly to Brazilians, there is a very strong Brazilian community here, naturally due to the language, the great cultural proximity too, it's true. And also due to the university, during some time, putting a lot of trust on the Lusophone world and that makes a lot of sense. As I was saying before, regarding the Sport Psychology laboratory, in which we have different research lines, from sports to participation and motivation.
And today we will talk a bit more about this topic. I focus more on matters related to lifestyle, to health, my doctorate research was in this topic, and it continues to be my current focus. The correlation between sports and a person's development, their social and personal development, as a person beyond being an athlete.
This is the area that I have been investigating more now. But we also give great support to athletes by studying matters related to psychological competences related to sports performance, but also matters related to promoting the practice of sports along the population. The theme I will talk about here is related to matters of behavioral change, because we all know that it's not easy to change completely, therefore, here I will try to explain the reasons that lead us to, for example, want to be more active or less active.
This is one of the topics we will study here. Author Antonovsky uses a metaphor that I find interesting. He mentions a river.
But we are not at the riverbank, we are swimming in the river. And, so, what he says, we should also see how dangerous the river is. But, essentially the focus is on the matter that we are all increasingly better swimmers, and by being good swimmers, regardless of the characteristics of the river, we are able to swim well, this perspective comes from a more salutogenic approach.
This author also talks about an interesting aspect that I want to mention here, which is the importance of developing well these three components, this pyramid, but when one of them fails, specially the third one, meaningfulness, to what extent are we motivated to use the resources? But, before that, we need to know these resources. Therefore, it is important to work on the capacity we all have to interpret reality, the world around us, challenges, the decisions we need to make and then we also need to identify what is it that I need to do when facing this reality, namely, and for example, the matter that if we practice sports, we are more active.
It's good to know that it's important to have a healthy lifestyle, whatever that may be. It doesn't fit the theme, but we could start many challenges now, to think a bit about: what is it to be healthy? What is this, to have a healthy lifestyle?
But there is something we know that completely protects our health, as science says, as it has thoroughly proved, and that is that having a balanced diet is fundamental. Not smoking is also a fundamental aspect. Not drinking alcohol, if possible, or at least not having an exaggerated alcohol intake, and having an appropriate weight are also important points.
These are all contributing factors, and, naturally, the theme we are focusing here, is to be active, how active, practicing physical exercises that suit our characteristics, our ages, and this is fundamental. These two components are important and we are able to this through a few different ways, but essentially, in the moment of truth, we need to put some effort in using these resources. And here is where we fail oftentimes, because I may even know reality, I know what I have to do, but why don't I do it?
I tackle this aspect. I won't dig deeper here because I will do so in another module later on. But it's important for you to come into contact with these matters by authors Prochaska and DiClemente.
These authors wrote a very interesting book that I recommend you all to read, named "Change for Good", which precisely tells about the phases we all go through before changing. High precontemplation, that is, we don't want to change, neither we want to hear or talk about being active. Until we reach a moment in which we think "yes, I do want to be active".
But there are several obstacles here and we will talk about this. And then there is this moment of preparation, which is "so let me prepare for change" and so we change. They are phases, they aren't a sequence of experiences.
It would be great if we could advance cycle after cycle. And, above all, the authors mention an aspect associated with this study too, which is the matter of pros and cons, it's a scale. There’s the devil on one shoulder saying no, or saying yes, and the angel on the other shoulder telling us not to do that.
Therefore, this constant balance between doing or not doing something, then making a decision and we need to work on this decision. The authors also tell us that, obviously, the more obstacles related to physical exercise we find, the more cons we have, the lower are our chances to overcome the action stage. And, therefore, this is the challenge I propose to you in this module.
It's that you all find your exercise, your sport, whatever it may be. Pay attention to this, practicing sports is fundamental. Practicing physical exercise is also fundamental.
I find it important to properly discern these three concepts, physical activity, physical exercise and practicing sport, but it's important to know the basis, that is, what the theories tell us: many people suddenly look for a gym to join, or they look for what's trendy, or for what's on sale, or what a friend recommends. But it's also important to make other changes in your lifestyle. Naturally, eating habits, and other matters.
Each person should reflect about their own lifestyles and try to find a healthy balance, I usually say that a healthy balance allows us to also have a balanced lifestyle. And, overall, it leads us to feel good, capable, independent and to have good relationships with ourselves and with others. So if we can trail this path, our chances of staying and smiling - and we are in such a complex world, where so many negatives things happen, there are so many bad things around us, that it's really important for us to have positive relationships with ourselves first and then with our families, with our friends, with our fellow workers.
And this is it.
