If you can answer this, planning your life will be much easier. But even if you can't, you probably have some idea about what you want.

Maybe what you care about most is love. Or maybe it's respect. Or security. Or freedom. Or excitement. Or a sense of control over your life.

It's more important to think about the total quality of your life than just about specific career or competitive goals because when you do, you'll focus on what's really important to you.

Can Sports Help You Accomplish Personal Goals?

Definitely. But the happiest athletes are often those who look beyond winning. They can appreciate sports as a lifestyle and an opportunity:

* Diver Kent Ferguson (who also worked as a model and was accepted by the University of Iowa dental school) was an alternate for the U.S. Olympic diving team twice (1984 and 1988). In 1989 he said, "Sure I wish I'd made the Olympics. But hey, I'm a kid from Iowa, and because of diving I've seen the world. I'm not complaining." (1)

In 1992 he did earn a spot on the team and competed in the Barcelona Olympics.

* Sprinter and long jumper Willye White (the first American track-and-field athlete to compete in five Olympics--1956 to 1976--and the only one until Carl Lewis) used sports to escape a life of poverty in the South. As a child she spent days picking cotton in Mississippi. "Sport was my flight to freedom. I am what I am because of my participation in sports." (2)

She went on to become the supervisor of physical fitness for the Chicago Department of Health, president of the Central Association of the Amateur Athletic Union, a consultant to the President's Council on Physical Fitness, and a member of the President's Commission on Olympic Sports. She now runs an organization to encourage inner city girls to participate in sports.

* World champion speedskater Dan Jansen competed in four different Olympics, but was unable to medal at any of them until he won on the very last try in Lillehammer in 1994. He is best known for having fallen in a race at the 1988 Calgary Olympics on the day his sister died of leukemia. "I've learned that things don't always go the way you planned. Not everyone can be a winner. That's a good lesson in life." (3)

* Luger Anne Abernathy, who competed in the 1988 Calgary, 1992 Albertville, and 1994 Lillehammer Olympics for the U.S. Virgin Islands, had to persevere in her sport despite obstacles and tens of thousands of dollars in expenses. Still, it was worth it to her.

"Every place I've gone, I've met people and made friends. I've seen history unfold, seen a perspective you don't get back home. To be standing with the Romanian team when Ceausecu is overthrown. To be with East and West Germans when the Berlin Wall comes down... I just wanted to do something different." (4)

* Brandy Johnson (America's top gymnast in the late 1980s) had this to say when she retired from the sport. "Through gymnastics I've learned how to be disciplined and how to make sacrifices. How to use good judgment--and how to make decisions that will affect the rest of my life, not knowing if they're good or bad, but having to take a chance." (5)

* Pablo Morales, a swimmer who set a world record in 1986 and won an Olympic gold medal in 1992, said he greatly benefited from his sports experiences. "The lessons learned in swimming: the goal setting, the discipline, applying yourself each and every day, the focus on the goal--something that can apply to every aspect of our lives. ... that's what I love about our sport and that's what most swimmers carry on after they're done, after they hang up their Speedos." (6)

* Tennis legend Billie Jean King said this about her sport. "It's about learning your craft ... It's about making decisions, corrections, choices. I don't think it's so much about becoming a tennis player. It's about becoming a person." (7)

Do Some Athletes Confuse Competitive Goals with Personal Ones?

Too many people mistakenly believe that all their problems will be solved when they make lots of money or become famous or win major competitions.

But life doesn't work like that. It's much better to first decide how you want to feel and then work backward from this image to find out the best way to get it.

However, if you don't really know what you are searching for, it's easy to get confused about your motives. This is a problem because motivation is so important to an athlete. To be your best, you have to know WHY you want to win, or even IF you want to win.

Barney Stanner of JobsInSports.com fully agrees with Ms. Lainson's point of view.

Examples:

* John Lucas achieved everything he wanted as an athlete. He excelled at both tennis and basketball.

As a tennis player, he was in the U.S. Open Junior Championships at 13 and was on the Junior Davis Cup Team at 17.

In basketball he set the North Carolina high school career scoring record. (He was also class valedictorian.)

In his last two years of college he was an All-American in both tennis and basketball. He was the top NBA draft pick in 1976. But his success was accompanied by alcohol and drug abuse. "I kept asking what was next. I'd grown up so fast in athletics that when I got to the professional ranks, I ran out of goals. Being the No. 1 draft pick made me ask: 'Where do I go from here?'" (8)

Lucas got treatment for his abuse problems in 1986, retired from the NBA in 1990, and established The John Lucas Aftercare Treatment and Recovery Center to treat substance abusers. In 1992 he purchased a minor league basketball team, coached it to the championship of the United States Basketball League, and then became head coach of the San Antonio Spurs and then head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers.

* Another athlete who found emptiness after reaching his goal was diver Mark Lenzi. He won the gold medal on the 3-meter springboard at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. But his life lost direction after that. "I felt like I had accomplished everything in my life. There was nothing left. I wasn't suicidal, but I was laying around, saying, 'My life stinks.'" (9)

In 1995 he decided to return to diving in an effort to earn a spot on the 1996 U.S. Olympic team. In March 1996 he set an unofficial world scoring record for the 3-meter springboard; in April he won the 1996 U. S. Indoor Championships.

He went on to win the bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Lucas and Lenzi aren't the only ones who have confused sports goals with personal goals. Many athletes have not separated their motivation to succeed in sports with their hopes for a fulfilling life.

1. Some athletes pursue sports careers because they think they enjoy training and competing, but what they really want is love and attention from their parents. As children they learned that the best way to please their parents was to win. Example:

* Shane Swartz (the 1994 and 1995 165-pound U.S. national amateur boxing champion) felt that when he didn't win, he was letting down his father, who had also been his coach.

His father died unexpectedly of a heart attack in January 1995. When Swartz was unable to capture his third Olympic Festival title in July 1995, he said, "I know I didn't impress my dad today. The hardest thing for me is I didn't do my dad proud because I didn't win this fight. I don't want to waste the last 15 years of my father's life." (10)

Even after he turned pro in 1996, Swartz felt the pressure to perform for others. When he returned home to Fort Collins, Colorado for a match he said, "I haven't boxed in Fort Collins in six or eight years. There's pressure to please my family and friends." (11)

At some point in their careers some of these athletes realize they have been competing for the wrong reasons and decide to quit. Example:

* John Frank was a starting tight end for the San Francisco 49ers and played in the 1989 Super Bowl. Earlier that year Frank's father, who had always pushed him to be the best at football, was sent to jail for tax evasion. With his father no longer there to tell him what he should do, Frank was free to make his own decisions about his career.

In April 1989 he quit football to go to medical school, something he had wanted to do since ninth grade. "I can't want to play only for the money. There has to be passion." (12)

In 1993, when he was a second year resident, he said, "I left a really wonderful, glamorous career. But I sort of realized there was a deeper side to life than just catching passes, filling up a stadium." (13)

2. Some athletes pursue sports as a way to win and keep friends. Many children learn quickly that sports can make you popular. Example:

* Chuckie V (Veylupek), a triathlete known for his spiked haircut, explained his reason for being an athlete. "In high school, I was running track to get girls. That's also why I spike my hair. It's why I train every day and go to extremes and punish myself with triathlons." (14)

Football running back Reggie Rivers, who played for the Denver Broncos, said that for many athletes, sports "becomes a magic wand of social power. It earns [the athlete] invitations to parties, deferential treatment from peers and dates with pretty girls." (15)

But this tactic often fails to satisfy their emotional needs because it attracts the wrong kinds of people to them--the sort who only care about them as athletes. This often results in superficial friendships and relationships. Example:

* Joe Ehrman, who played defensive tackle for the Baltimore Colts, said, "I always thought that I would find great meaning and purpose and value in being a professional football player. I always believed that if I could just get enough sacks, if my team could do well enough, if my contract would get big enough, it would all come together."

Then Ehrman's younger brother died of cancer. Looking for something more than just football, Ehrman began attending seminary during his off-seasons. When he retired as a pro, he became a full-time minister, serving the urban poor in Baltimore. (16)

Leigh Steinberg, an agent who has handled many top football players, had this to say on the subject: "The problem that the athlete has is that he's surrounded by externals--adulation, newspaper clippings, money, people who like him because he's an athlete--all of which fade when his career is over. If he hasn't built a strong sense of self-respect, settled in a community where he's cared for and cares for other people, and come to understand that those values will transcend a short football, baseball or basketball career, then he's in for a rude awakening when he leaves sports." (17)

3. Some athletes enjoy sports, but discover they don't want the pressures that accompany professional careers. These athletes mistakenly assume that what attracted them to sports as children will be present when they are adults. Example:

* Pearl Washington, a star on the Syracuse Univeristy basketball team in the mid-1980s, was signed by the New Jersey Nets in the first round of the 1986 NBA draft, but only played three years in the NBA and then another three in the CBA. "The NBA wasn't what I thought it would be. It was much harder, and I just didn't have the desire anymore. It wasn't fun. It wasn't like college. It wasn't like high school. It wasn't like summer league. It just wasn't fun. If you ever watched me play when I was in college and in high school, I was always smiling. In the pros, you didn't see that." (18)

Washington is now back at Syracuse to finish his degree while working as a youth basketball coach for the City of Syracuse Parks and Recreation Department and doing color commentary on radio and television for the school's men's and women's basketball teams.

He had a brain tumor removed in 1995, an event which changed his outlook on life. "God has given me another chance. I'm excited about it. I'm taking full advantage of everything. Life is not promised to you every day." (19)

An excellent book to help you sort out personal goals is Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want by Barbara Sher, with Annie Gottlieb. It helps you to first define what you want and then to determine the best way to get it.

What makes this book so useful is that it shows you that through creativity, flexibility, and unconventional approaches to your challenges, you can find ways to achieve more than you thought possible.


1 USA Today, May 2, 1988.
2 The Denver Post, April 10, 1989.
3 Rocky Mountain News, February 4, 1992.
4 The Wall Street Journal, February 7, 1992.
5 Parade Magazine, April 7, 1991.
6 "The Games of 92," CNN, May 31, 1992.
7 Sports Illustrated, April 29, 1991.
8 Parade Magazine, May 16, 1993.
9 The New York Times, April 26, 1996.
10 USA Today, July 25, 1995.
11 Rocky Mountain News, June 3, 1996.
12 Sports Illustrated, August 28, 1989.
13 The San Francisco Examiner, December 26, 1993.
14 Rolling Stone, September 16, 1993.
15 Rocky Mountain News, June 4, 1995.
16 Parade, April 15, 1990.
17 Sports Illustrated, May 4, 1992.
18 Sports Illustrated, January 8, 1996.
19 Los Angeles Times, February 9, 1997.

Click here to see job opportunities in the sports industry at JobsInSports.com.