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The game is over. The crowds have gone home. Accolades have been handed out, and you find yourself in the twilight of what once seemed an unending stream of competition. Being an athlete is who you are; competition is the means by which you define yourself. And now it is over, not just for the day or the season; you are at the end of your competitive career.
What now?
Athletes spend much of their young lives preparing to compete, and then in competition itself. Physically, mentally, and even emotionally, their lives are filled with structure that leads them in that direction. These experiences shape their minds and their bodies during this crucial time of development. In most cases, preparation and participation begins at a very young age, initiated by their parents or guardians. The athletes train, grow up, and rise to varying levels of competition through challenge and triumph. Then one day it is over. Their world is reordered in a moment. There is a loss that occurs, and yet there is almost no preparation for that transition at all. We are here to do something about that.
This community has been created to provide those athletes with a reflective framework through which they can put to use the skills they have acquired through competition to prepare for life after it. Each of us can shape a healthy path forward with help from the collective experiences shared by us all.
This Community is for you if:
- You are currently an athlete competing at any level, amateur or professional.
- You are an athlete at the end of your competing years, looking ahead to life without competition with any degree of uncertainty.
- You are a former competitor, struggling to find a fulfilling next chapter, feeling empty or unfocused.
- You are a former competitive athlete who has found success in your life beyond, and yet, in spite of that, still feels unfulfilled by your success.
- You are a coach or a mentor, guiding athletes through the end of their competing days and looking for ideas upon which to base that process.
- You are a parent or a partner of any of the above.
The goal of our shared work is not to guarantee success or to frame life in purely athletic terms. It is instead to provide a means to transition from this structured world of competition to something beyond that is fulfilling and satisfying. That something could look a lot like sports, or it could be very different. There are vast opportunities both within and beyond competition for those skills honed within it – the idea is to arrive at that point healthy, focused, and with a clear objective that sets each individual on a path to a fulfilling life.
We discern immediately between an ‘Athlete’ and a ‘Competitor’ – one can be an athlete in a wide variety of senses up to the very end of life. The term ‘athlete’ describes who we are. Competing is what we do. There are athletes who do not compete, and there are competitors who are not athletes. Our concern here is with the transition that occurs at the ending of that active period of competition during which we grew, and through which we define ourselves. We will always be athletes, but our competition window is small.
Regardless of the level at which we compete, it sometimes feels like those years of competing will go on indefinitely, particularly when we are young and our frame of reference is limited. We dive in headlong, only somewhat aware of the full grandeur of the gift we are enjoying. An ending to those competitive years does come eventually, and with it the inevitable process of working through the vastly different expectations and challenges that come next. On the positive side, our competitive experiences translate well to challenges outside of the world of competition. By focusing on these skills as the building blocks of our life ahead, we have what we need to build a fulfilling life beyond. On the negative side, most of us rarely if ever take the time to think and reflect upon what goals or outcomes will come next, what will motivate us to achieve them, and how we will overcome the inevitable adversity. Just as is the case in our athletic experiences, these next steps are best taken by design and not by relying upon chance. To make such a transition without a game plan means to rely upon hope or happenstance to find that next source of fulfillment. So many other former athletes have gone on to successful lives and careers by using their skills in other areas. Still others find that success, and once there, also find that such success is not always accompanied by the same feeling of fulfillment that they found in their competitive years. Our aim here is to provide the raw materials through which each individual person can build a fulfilling plan for their next steps, and develop the capacity to see that plan through to completion.
Let’s get started.