Depression is on the rise year after year as you may already know. It’s wide spreading with the help of many factors including social media. Depression is skyrocketing among young people especially.
With that said, fighting depression should be on your priorities list all the time. If you or a person that you know are depressed, then one thing that you can do is to play or watch soccer.
Soccer can indeed help with depression, and this article is dedicated to tell you how. I’ve written a full article about the help that soccer offers to your mental health, But I thought that I also needed to dedicate an article about how soccer can help you fight depression specifically.
I’ll be using the same approach as I used in the previous article. According to a non profit organization called the “Help Guide”, doing the following things can help you fight depression.
- Stay connected and reach out to people
- Do things that you like doing
- Get moving and stay active
- Eat healthy
- Get a dose of sunlight
- Face your negative thinking
This list of tips to overcome depression is very effective, and all of the tips listed can be achieved with soccer.
Here’s how.
1- Soccer helps you reach out to people.
Soccer is a game that only works if there are a group of people who want to play the game. With that said, if you decide to play soccer, then there’s no way you can skip the part where you have to reach out to people.
If you have a bunch of friends who are free to have some fun, then reach out to them and ask if they want to play soccer.
Soccer gives you a great reason to connect with people face to face instead of just chatting about boring things on social media.
I am speaking from personal experience here. The best period of my life was the time when I and a group of friends used to play soccer on a regular basis.
Whenever one of us felt down or bored, they just had to ask who was free to play some soccer, and it worked all the time.
Even if you don’t have a lot of people who’re free to play soccer, you can still have fun with a soccer ball. You can play a soccer related game even if you’re only 2 people. I’ve compiled a small list of what games you can play with a soccer ball, and some of these games only require 2 people to work.
So, if you’re depressed, just reach out to your friends and ask if they want to play soccer with you. This will give you a change to connect with other people and to have a lot of fun.
2- Soccer helps you do things that you like to do
Who doesn’t like to spend some quality time with their friends by playing some sort of game with them? Soccer can help you do that.
If you have any interests in soccer, then it’s a great idea if you keep playing the game on a regular basis because it can be so much fun for you, and it can turn into something that you love to do.
You can also choose to watch professional soccer matches for fun instead of playing them. Soccer matches are extremely fun to watch and here are some reasons why you may love watching soccer matches.
The main take away from this section is that doing what you love to do can help you fight depression, and soccer can definitely be something that you love to do or something that you look forward to doing.
3- Soccer helps you get moving and stay active
Increasing your physical activity by working out or by doing any other physically engaging activity is one way to overcome depression.
Soccer can help you do that. As a matter of fact, soccer is a FULL BODY workout. When you play soccer, you’ll need to engage every part of your body throughout the whole match.
Whenever you feel down, instead of going to bed and endlessly scrolling through social media, you need to stand up, and perform some physical activity that can snap you out of the negative state that you’re in.
This physical activity can be playing soccer, or just training for soccer. Whenever you feel depressed, just do something physical. If you can’t go outside to play soccer or do any other physical activity, then you can train for soccer at your home with just a soccer ball.
Whatever you decide to do, make sure that it engages you physically.
4- Soccer requires that you eat healthy food.
Eating healthy food can help you overcome your depression. Also, eating healthy food can increase your soccer stamina.
Soccer strongly encourages healthy food because it helps the players become much more effective on the soccer field.
In fact, professional soccer players are forced to keep their meals as healthy as possible so that they will be able to perform the best way they can during professional soccer matches.
So, if you decide to be a great soccer player, one thing that you need to do automatically is to take care of your eating habits, which will also help you fight any depression that you have according to the tips listed at the beginning of this article.
5- Soccer helps you get a dose of sunlight.
If you decide to play soccer during the day in an open area, then you’ll definitely get exposed to the sunlight for as long as the match goes on.
With that said, make sure that you play soccer during the day every now and then in order to expose your body to enough sunlight.
However, make sure that the sun’s heat isn’t dangerous for you. If it’s extremely hot outside, then it’s better if you postpone your game to when the sun is less dangerous to your body.
6- Soccer can help you challenge your negative thinking
There are a lot of soccer skills that a soccer player needs to learn in order to be good at soccer. You won’t be able to learn these skills until you get rid of any negative thinking and until you start believing that you can do it.
So, while you’re trying to master the essential skills required to play soccer, you will have to challenge your negative thoughts, and you’ll have to believe in yourself, else you won’t be able to learn the skills.
So in a way, soccer can help you overcome your negativity. The best thing is that you’ll see instant results. For example. If you overcome any negativity and master the art of passing a soccer ball, then you’ll find yourself much better during a soccer match.
This can help you in the future whenever you’re dealing with any other skill that you want to learn. Because if you can do it once, then you can do it again and again.
That’s it for this article. The main take away from what you have just read is the following.
Soccer can help you overcome depression. Soccer helps you connect with people, stay healthy, workout, get a good dose of sunlight, overcome negativity and so much more. If you’re feeling depressed, give soccer a try and you won’t regret it.