A lot of the time athlete will come to see me with the knowledge that they want to get involved in SOMETHING beyond sport. That said, the exact WHAT of that eludes them. A lot of this question comes back to the age old query – “What do you want to be when you grow up?” To be sure, this is a tough question to answer, but there are answers to be had if you know where to look. Last time, I talked about the foundations to those answers, and how they lie in defining your values and what gives you meaning. But what comes after you start to sort those questions out? This phase of work starts to move away from the philosophical, and into the practical. This is where we take the values previously identified, and start to see what areas might be congruent with that.

A big part of finding the answer to “What do you want” comes down to exploration. Identifying a number of possible pathways are starting to examine what each may have to offer is a big part of this process. A lot of the time I will use certain resources we have available through Game Plan (Career Cruising is a personal favorite) but as much as possible this is an individually driven process. Frustrating as it can be for the athlete with whom I work, I try to never tell people what to do (at least insofar as their long term future is concerned). I merely want to help people consider different options, and make decisions themselves based on the best available information.

The goal here isn’t to find the “ultimate” answer, but rather to start narrowing the field. Sometimes it comes down to simply identifying 2-3 roles or industries that one might be interested in, and begging some exploration from there. At the same time, my role is to actively guide athletes through this process, so that the world of choices don’t become too overwhelming.