Tim Harkness

LUNCH IS PROVIDED

Optimism is crucial in sport. The ability to see opportunity where others see adversity is a distinguishing factor of successful athletes and teams. The best athletes are highly optimistic individuals. Likewise, sport is crucial in optimism. Stories and morality tales are a medium through which we disseminate ideas and values. In modern society, sport is one of the best generators of these shared stories, occupying a place in modern consciousness equivalent to traditional adventure yarns and epics. A win/win for sport and optimism is to make this relationship more explicit, to reach into sport and improve performance by enhancing and developing natural optimism skills, and to use sport as a vehicle to carry optimism into society, by giving it more prominence in the sports stories that are told by players, coaches, commentators and fans. This is a discussion and a request for perspectives and ideas.

Timothy Harkness is the club psychologist at Chelsea Football (soccer) Club, where he works with senior and junior players. His three approaches are positive psychology, cognitive perception training, and psychophysiology. Prior to Chelsea, he was in private practice in Durban, South Africa, where he consulted with a range of athletes, children and ordinary people. Tim is married with three sons, and is a keen mountain biker.

Please RSVP to Peggy Kern at mkern@sas.upenn.edu for this talk by Wednesday 10 am (and let me know if you have any dietary limitations).