Marian Jelínek: Stop clearing the path for children; we need immense resilience

Many people associate the name Marian Jelínek primarily with ice hockey. The former coach of the Czech national ice hockey team, with whom he became a world champion, as well as HC Sparta, however, has a much broader portfolio than coaching alone.

He focuses on individual coaching of athletes, gives lectures, writes books and textbooks, and leads motivation courses for sports-talented children. He draws inspiration from books and travel. Over time, he has shifted his attention from coaching towards studying the “mental laboratory” of elite sport. What pressures do today’s athletes face, and why should we stop clearing the path for children? You will learn this in the interview. Marian also introduces the MSc programme Mental Coaching in Sport and Business, of which he is the guarantor.

You have been coaching people for years, but who coaches you?

Books coach me the most. Also travelling, nature or staying in a monastery. I do not have a personal coach. When I was young, my father acted as my mentor. But books are the most important thing for me. I usually read five or six books at the same time. They are books related to psychology or, for example, neurology. On my desk I have Jung, František Koukolík, Ivan Černohorský, Radkin Honzák. When it comes to travelling, I go to areas suffering from economic hardship: the Amazon, Guatemala, Mexico, Sri Lanka, China, and now I am heading to the Himalayas.

Does a person need certain predispositions for travel to really give them something? I know many people who packed up for half a year hoping everything would change, came back, and everything stayed the same…

I think we must learn to look, observe, perceive our surroundings, quiet down, and sometimes simply wander. A person should have the richest possible inner world. The more I know, the more deeply I can absorb a given moment. If I walk through a forest and do not know a single tree, butterfly or plant species, and someone asks me where I was, I will say: in the forest. And what was there? Well, trees. When you know something about the forest, your perceptions are far richer, which allows you to experience the moment much more intensely and also see more connections: hornbeams grow here because it is damp. Many people travel the world without realising that knowing where I am going gives me a far deeper experience. That is why education and awareness combined with experience are important. They must be in symbiosis. If I only have knowledge, I become a sterile theoretician; if I only have experiences, I become a blind practitioner.

Marian Jelínek is the guarantor of the unique MSc programme Mental Coaching in Sport and Business

Do you think this perceptiveness can be trained? I often ask people how their holiday was, and they say: the hotel was nice.

I think it is up to everyone. We all have a choice, and unfortunately we all interpret freedom differently. Freedom must lead to responsibility. If I am responsible towards myself, my life, my children, and the time I have been given and want to live it as intensely as possible, I should know something about the place where I am. But if someone is made happy by a nice hotel, that is their choice. I do not want to change anyone, but I personally do not want to live like that.

Why do so many people literally chase experiences, take photos, travel like crazy, yet it still does not feel right?

It would be useful to explain the difference between an experience and a lived experience. A lived experience is much stronger than a mere experience. If I only have an experience, I see just the scenery around me, I do not see connections or links to deeper experience. Then it goes like this: we were by the sea, there were big waves, the food was great. Only at the end of the story do you find out which country the person was actually in. But again, I cannot dictate to anyone how or what they should perceive. That is up to each individual.

You mentioned your father. In what way did he mentor you? In sport?

No, quite the opposite. My father was a doctor, my brother is a doctor. My mother worked in healthcare. I went in a different direction. My father quietly tolerated my elite sports career and my studies at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, but he constantly reminded me that education is extremely important, so I also completed studies at the Faculty of Science. Later, when I had fully experienced elite sport in all its aspects, partly thanks to Jaromír Jágr, I realised that I wanted something more from life than just coaching. I became fascinated by psychology. I did not want to leave elite sport, but I discovered that the mental laboratory of elite sport is truly extraordinary. The shifts in emotional intensity, winning one moment and losing the next, the alchemy of emotions, the things that can happen within a team of alpha males are beyond imagination. In everyday life, things are not that fast or dynamic.

What is the key topic of mental coaching in elite sport?

Being able to work with unwanted thoughts. These are thoughts a person does not want, mostly related to fear, or rather the control of emotions, motivation, concentration or self-confidence. Another crucial aspect is increasing mental resilience. In times like these, you must be damn resilient, partly because digitalisation enables more frequent, faster and stronger attacks on an athlete’s ego. It is incredibly ugly and fast. Within five minutes after a match, you already have hateful comments on Instagram. The person might have written it differently six hours later, but now they can write it immediately and fail to restrain their emotions. This is one of the consequences of speed, clip-like communication and superficiality of today’s world, and it puts extreme strain on our emotions. Many athletes then tell me: I feel like giving up, it is not worth it, look at what people are writing about me.

Students of the only programme of its kind in the Czech Republic will understand the mental barriers of athletes and businesspeople

What path is available to strengthen the mental resilience of talented children?

For me, it is the path that Open Gate is trying to follow, namely a new school subject that would teach children how to work with their subjective world and prepare them for life in today’s world. For example, how to deal with failure, stress, unwanted thoughts, emotional intelligence. Elite athletes and managers often say that everything is in the head. Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist, writes that twenty percent of success is IQ, the rest is EQ. That is why, together with a colleague, we are creating a textbook and, if approved, teaching of a new subject will begin at Open Gate in September 2023. Teachers will receive additional training for this subject. The Ministry of Education has been talking about it for a long time, but turning a Titanic is unfortunately more difficult, and Open Gate offered me this collaboration.

And besides the new textbook?

To create a population that is mentally and physically more resilient. Consumption of not only antibiotics but also antidepressants is increasing. If I want a child to be more resilient, I know no other way than to gradually expose them to cold in a sensible way. In other words, I must make the path slightly less comfortable even in prosperity. When a child develops certain habits, they have greater potential to become physically resilient. If you want to increase mental resilience, the era of smoothing the path must end. We should deliberately and thoughtfully place obstacles in a child’s way so they learn how to overcome them. In sport, for example, we must allow a child to experience defeat. We should not lie to them or console them superficially. Do not always let children win at board games just because they are small. No one in life will always let you win either. There are demanding challenges, and we must face them. We must train children in how to deal with defeat and failure. Teach them that mistakes often hurt, but they are an important moment on the path towards a goal and show us what we still need to work on.

You wrote a book about fear. Is fear what holds people back the most?

As we have said, our subjective worlds are burdened mainly by unwanted thoughts. These thoughts originate primarily from some form of fear. Even jealousy, pride or anger are, in the end, fears of something or someone. It is essential to realise that there are two types of fear: fear for life, which helps us survive and is archetypally older. But today, our lives are no longer at risk every day, and this fear has been replaced by another type: fear for the ego. This one is harmful, destructive and limits our performance. When a child wets themselves because of a dictation test, it is a negative, disturbing fear. When a child climbs a tree and suddenly realises they could fall and it could end in disaster, starts crying, that is a positive fear, protecting the body from destruction. But we have turned a bad grade in a dictation test into a catastrophe, as if our life were at stake, and the body reacts accordingly. Society is characterised by a pursuit of perfection, it does not allow mistakes, defeats or failure. Yet it is natural that I am good at something and bad at something else. We want credit for everything. But we must be able to accept ourselves and our imperfection without emotions.

But you also motivate people to perform…

That does not contradict anything. Results clearly matter from a certain age. The question is what pressure we put on results at a given age. Today’s world puts enormous pressure on outcomes, regardless of how they are achieved, which can even lead to unethical behaviour. Plato once said a beautiful sentence: “Those who love power should not have access to it.” If we manage to tune an individual’s subjective world into a certain harmony between love for the activity and the desire to be the best at it, the situation changes. The individual then has fewer problems with ethical norms and values. Simply put, when I love the activity and want to get the most out of it, I suddenly find harmony in my subjective world, which is highly productive and less prone to unethical behaviour. But if my subjective world is set only on wanting as much as possible, it becomes fertile ground for unethical conduct. That is why I always ask students: do you enjoy money, or do you enjoy earning money?

You are the guarantor of the study programme Mental Coaching in Business and Sport. What is its main focus?

Working with one’s subjective world. Teaching people, in an inspiring way, how to work with themselves, self-coaching. We fly to Mars, yet we do not know ourselves. If I want to work with something, I must first understand it, which is why self-awareness is part of the programme. It also includes information and practical exercises from psychology, anatomy, neurology and similar fields, and then you move on to techniques through which you can influence the subjective world. I do not like being called a mental coach; I work with the subjective world of my clients. But find me a better term for someone who works with people’s subjective worlds. A significant difference between this programme and the multitude of coaching courses is the fact that you receive an academic education and earn an MSc degree, which is something unique. The teaching team is composed in the way I consider the best possible in the Czech Republic.

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PhDr. Marian Jelínek, Ph.D., Guarantor of the MSc programme Mental Coaching in Sport and Business, in which you gain a portfolio of tools to increase the effectiveness of working with any human potential. Marian Jelínek is a recognised expert in mental coaching in the Czech Republic, who has worked with sports stars such as Karolína Plíšková, Tomáš Rosický and Jaromír Jágr.