THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EXTREME SPORTS:  
WHY WE WANT THE THRILL 

1. On 14 October 2012, more than 8 million viewers watched one event across  the world, marking the biggest televised event to date. It wasn't a presidential  election, a royal wedding, or an Olympic ceremony; but the mere sight of  extreme daredevil Felix Baumgartner risking his life by jumping from  40 kilometres above the earth.
2. Why such a bizarre event attracted millions of us is questionable. Why do  dangerous activities like extreme sports excite us? What motivates us to  participate in them? Why do we want the thrill? There are thousands of  explanations for why we enjoy extreme sports. Going back to our innate  needs and desires, however, the following are arguably some strong  explanations of our attraction to risk.
3. Ethnologists1 explain fear as an emotional and bodily response that exists for  the purpose of protecting us from danger. Naturally, fear motivates us to  seek safety so as to survive stressful, life-threatening situations. The fight-or flight response depicts this perfectly. For example, walking home late at  night, you may hear sudden movements in a bush nearby. Beyond your  control, your body reacts, alerting you that you are in danger. Pumped with  adrenaline, you find yourself ready to run for your life or turn back to fight  your enemy. This natural response makes perfect sense if a person's life is  threatened as it yields survival value. In the case of extreme sports,  however, it seems unnatural and irrational to actively seek out that response  for no protective purpose. Why willingly jump off a bridge if you are not being  chased? 
4. Perceiving risk positively can yield numerous (even survival) benefits for the  individual and the group. The more you expose yourself to a risk, the more  comfortable you become in handling the associated fear. The less time you  spend on coping with the fear, the more time you have to make improved  decisions. The more we take risks such as walking across high bridges, the  more positive our emotions become in handling fear and the better our  reactions to them become. Seeking out fear and risk, then, play an important  positive role in the survival of the human race. 
5. Most extreme sports, whether skydiving or bungee jumping, have one very  significant attribute in common – they are individual sports. In contrast to the team sports, you are on your own: your survival or death is all on you. 
6. Several studies on the personalities of extreme sport participants have  revealed certain shared personality traits and attitudes of their participants.  For example, experienced skydivers have been found either to have or to  develop an internal locus2 of control. With an internal locus of control, you  attribute successes and failures to your own controllable actions, rather than  external, uncontrollable events. With this attitude, extreme sports  participants are on a mission to test themselves by pushing their limits and  independence to the maximum; but this desire is not exclusive to them.  
7. Pushing ourselves past our limits and comfort zone is something each of us  does on a daily basis, whether going above and beyond on the job, or  pushing ourselves to run for five more minutes during a workout. A sense of  accomplishment is a major reward factor that comes into play in shaping our  identity, arguably the purpose of life itself! We enjoy being able to say, 'I did  it; I knew I could!' This 'I did it' sense of identity trickles down into other areas  of our lives to make a lasting, rewarding impact. Ask a first-timer how his/her  skydiving experience went, and you might get the response, 'It changed my  life.' 
8. Taking unbearable risks that put you in direct contact with the face of death  helps people uncover new faiths and beliefs that might not have been so  strong otherwise. After fearful experiences that test your psychological  strength, you might become more open-minded, spiritual and accepting of  human mortality, vulnerability and insignificance. 
9. Putting yourself at major risk can also help you to understand what truly  matters in life – usually whatever comes to mind during intense moments of  fear. A persistent need for us to make sense of life is the same reason we  turn to religion and other forms of faith. Extreme sports do something very  similar for us; participants might actively be seeking out those moments for a  rewarding reality check and a new appreciation of life. With the survival  value of risk and fear, an egotistical need to identity ourselves, and an ever encompassing need to understand life, it is no surprise, then, that we are  ever-curious about taking risks. 

10. Attracting over 8 million people to witness Felix Baumgartner's famous jump,  it will be fascinating to find out what the next limit we push together will be.

    [Adapted from www.rivercreations.com] 

PEOPLE-PLEASING: A THREAT TO SUCCESS 

There is a fine line between being kind and being a pushover. When you are too kind,  you make your way through life by placating. This makes you vulnerable to being  dismissed by others. People-pleasing occurs when you consistently change your  position because you fear your natural thoughts will not be well received. But, instead  of pleasing others to gain approval, simply expect to be treated with respect. 
Your need of approval eventually drains other people and you need to keep in mind  that there is no path to success through coat-tailing other people. The real path to  success can come only through your belief in yourself. In essence, the only way to get  what you want in life, is to say what you want and go after it. With this in mind, you  must remember that success is the ultimate prize for trusting your own abilities, which  you garner through risk-taking and not people-pleasing. In the long run, if you cannot  function without feeling wrecked, upset, or anxious, there will be no path to your  success. People are not going help you up the ladder of success by feeling sorry for  you. Hence you need to learn to grow from feedback rather than to shrink from it. 
Furthermore, research shows that pleasing people creates dishonesty by default and  people-pleasers have a habit of asking permission in situations where needing  permission is not required. No one can really know you, your ideas or your value if you  are a mere pleaser of other people. Successful individuals aren't 'fit-in' people: they are  confident enough in themselves and they do not fear to be brutally honest when  necessary. Ultimately, the quickest way to overcome the uncertainty of trying to 'fit in' is  to commit to what you believe in and to speak out. 
Brutal honesty does not imply that you need to start every sentence with 'I'm sorry'.  You don't need to apologise for your existence and you need to be bold enough to  make mistakes. 
Why use pleasing to look perfect to others? When you are doing this, you are being  fake. The greatest irony with people-pleasing is that it always produces results  opposite to those which are intended. 

[Adapted from www.huffingtonpost.com]

THE PERFECT CRUSH IS IMAGINARY OR DEAD 

1. The first crush I had was on a cartoon bird. He was one of the vultures in The Jungle Book. The tall one, if you can say that a bird is tall. I thought  he was incredibly cool. I liked his hairstyle and his perfectly flawless singing  voice. He was superior to the other vultures in every way. Even at the age  of five, I recognised my feelings for what they were. This is a crush, I told  myself. Watch out, bird.
2. I thought, 'These crushes are incomprehensible, the ones to which you can  assign no sense or meaning.' 
3. The ideal crush object is someone that you will never meet. Really, they  should be fictional, or at least dead. This way you are free to imagine all  the excellent times you will have together, the laughs, the jokes and the free exchange of complementary views. Crushes will never turn out to be possessive of their stationary, nor correct your grammar, nor refer to the  internet as 'the interwebs'. A crush will never do any of these things because,  for your purposes, they exist only in your head. 

[Adapted from Sunday Times, 15 July 2015]