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Transferable Work Quality #8: Good Enough is Not Enough

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: As an athlete, you never become quite satisfied with the status quo. Inside your head, you know that nothing changes and nobody gets better if people accept that “good enough” is enough. You know how to stay out of the routine because routines don’t help you grow. You have learned how to make little changes in how you improve yourself and your game, one at a time, and plan the next few as you go. As an athlete, you have experienced what it takes to make incremental and long-lasting changes so that you never feel comfortable with “good enough.”

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

Transferable Work Quality #7: Opportunity in Adversity

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: As an athlete, you have learned on a number of occasions that on the road to success, you’re going to meet adversity and failure a few times. Great athletes overcome the naysayers and the odds. They adapt their goals to reality, and they never stop trying. Adversity is part of the road, and you have learned to accept it and keep going and to see the opportunity in the adversity.

You know that success is not a one-time incident. Success should be seen as a habit, and inside you can relate to the “champion mentality.” To become a great athlete, you have experienced more success than you have failure in your life. In a way, you have become addicted to success. After you’ve reached a goal, you typically find a new challenge. Through sports, you have learned to pursue success in all aspects of your life.

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

Transferable Work Quality #6: Focus and Practice

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Great athletes become great by mastering the quality of remaining focused in their tasks, actions, and challenges. As an athlete, you know the value of being prepared and that without the discipline of practice, you run the risk of never achieving greater success or improving your individual skills. You know how to practice. Being focused and prepared includes knowing all you can about your sport… and ultimately, your profession. The more you know, the more you can do. The best athletes are always looking for ways to improve themselves.

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

New Blog to Provide Career Advice to Collegiate Athletes - Free-Press-Release.com

New Blog to Provide Career Advice to Collegiate Athletes - Free-Press-Release.com

Transferable Work Quality #5: Being Optimistic

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: One of the favorite phrases in sports is “You never know.” This is about being optimistic and trusting your instincts and never lying down until the last ounce of opportunity has been exhausted. As an athlete, you have learned that sometimes you have to go with a hunch, confidently knowing that your own optimism might be the only reason to take on a difficult challenge. It is also about treating everyone you meet and compete with, including referees and umpires, with the optimistic opinion that they are good, honest people. As an athlete, you learn to treat every situation as an opportunity.

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

Transferable Work Quality #4: Purpose

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: As an athlete, you possess a fundamental purpose underlying your success—a sense of purpose in what you have accomplished. And fundamental to this purpose is caring about other people, about being aware of what the people around you need. You have learned about helping teammates play better and compete intelligently. Maybe you came from an athletic program in which you didn’t talk exclusively about winning, but also about life’s great lessons. Maybe your athletic history has helped you see the constant quest to be the best you can be. For you, sports was more than just a game—it also provided you with a sense of purpose.

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

Transferable Work Quality #3: Going Above and Beyond

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Great athletes who people admire and respect are the ones who will go the extra mile. The same is true in order to be successful in business and to lead an enriching and satisfying life. As an athlete, it is not enough to do just the bare minimum to get by. You know that each day there is only one person who truly knows what level of effort you have put forth to be successful… you. And when you have stayed after practice to work on a particular skill, or left the party early so you can catch up on important sleep, or put away the X-Box in order to go to the gym, you have demonstrated and experienced the difficult quality of learning to go above and beyond what is required. This is an enormously important skill to possess.

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

Transferable Work Quality #2: Motivation

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: As an athlete, you know about waking up nervous the day of a big event or practice and realizing that motivation to excel—to harness the excitement and energy for the day—is a fundamental key to success. You know that the drive to succeed often comes from inside yourself and not from any external influence. Fear is something that great athletes also face, but they overcome their fears and go out and compete anyway. Being motivated is about seeing the light, keeping your eyes on the prize and knowing why you want to make things happen. And when you reach success, you know it is not the time to rest on your laurels. You know the temptation to slack off starts when you’re feeling good about who you are and what you’ve achieved… and you know that it takes significant motivation to not fall victim to this temptation.

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

Transferable Work Quality #1: Being Passionate and Positive

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: As an athlete, you have firsthand experience in finding your passion and working with the best and most positive people you can find. You have learned that focusing on the things you can control and not worrying about the things you cannot control is paramount to success. You have also learned the valuable experience of creating and being part of a team and being a part of a group of individuals who care as much about the people around them as they do about themselves—people who will work synergistically toward a common goal.

Make certain all your future employers know you possess this quality, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

The Top 8 DNA Qualities You Possess That Employers Covet

In the next eight Blog postings, I will cite eight DNA qualities your athletic experience has directly or indirectly taught you that will be very beneficial and transferable to the working world. Make certain all your future employers know you possess these qualities, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

Employers Know That Athletes Know How To Win!

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Abilities and motivations are the qualifications employers expect for particular jobs. Your motivated abilities and skills are generally a combination of your own particular DNA and the transferable skills you acquired during your years of sports participation. Since you are an unknown and risky quantity for a prospective employer, you must communicate evidence of these abilities and skills so they can better predict your future performance.

This is a “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” kind of argument, for it is debatable whether it is athletic participation that allows athletes to develop the traits and skills that make them successful or if it is simply that people who participate in athletics inherently possess these traits. Regardless of the outcome of that debate, at the end of the day, athletes know how to win!

Employers look for signs of a future productivity when they look to hire someone. Typically, every great athlete possesses a few innate traits common to an athlete DNA that are known elements of a productive team environment and a high-level athletic environment.

In the next eight Blog postings, I will cite eight DNA qualities your athletic experience has directly or indirectly taught you that will be very beneficial and transferable to the working world. Make certain all your future employers know you possess these qualities, and be prepared to cite personal examples where each quality was learned.

You Learn to Have Fun…and More

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Somewhere along the way while playing sports, you learn to have fun—but you also learn how to be tough and intensely competitive. It’s not an easy balancing act to try to get along with everyone as you try to find a way to win. And, you learn about being a part of something and finishing it up. You learn about discipline, handling disappointments, being more team-oriented, and realizing that not everything is about you. You could score, but could you pass? Employers understand that athletes possess soft-skills which are difficult to acquire anywhere other than though sports participation.

Here's some more great benefits playing sports: On the turf field, on the court, in the pool, or on the track, every athlete gets a lesson in community organization and education. It is where you can make your closest friends, whether they were from a different neighborhood, on a different team, or of a different color. It is an environment where your GPA, your religion, or your sex couldn’t be a disadvantage. The respect you received playing sports was usually a direct result of the respect you gave.

Athletics Largely Shape Who We Are

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: The licensed establishment known as organized athletics serves us well in two important areas:

• It is a great training ground to find out who you are, what you are made of, and what you’re capable of.
• It provides you with exposure to an environment from which to learn the human interaction skills necessary to be confident and successful in your life.

Organized sports, particularly in high school and at the major college level, are also an exercise in submission to social control. Within this environment, rules, conformity, plays, media, expectation, measurement, referees and pressure all conspire to make you an integral part of the team, like it or not.

By contrast, unorganized sports like pick-up ball, four-square, hopscotch, or the other playground sports we all grew up on, provided our most important life lessons. First and foremost, unorganized sports taught us a great deal about collective governance and constant conflict resolution. Pick-up ball harks back to a traditional time when kids weren’t scheduled into play dates or stashed with adult supervision, but instead made their way to the park on their own, picked teams, had fun, and sorted it all out… conflicts, disagreements, start and stop times, rules, team selections, and who was out and who was safe. It was on the playground where most athletes molded their athlete DNA and grew up along the way.

One of a Kind… for Better or Worse

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: When people become highly skilled at anything they were not forced to learn, they are probably expressing a natural gift. One person might learn multiple languages with incredible ease, while another person has very little ability to learn languages but possesses a gift for downhill skiing. Someone born with a collection of innate abilities has an easier time learning certain things, and they turn each progressive skill corner much more easily.

Each of us has already been dealt a very specific hand of cards by our genetic inheritance of talent and ability. That gives us a knack for playing a great game of lacrosse, tennis, or water polo… and, going forward in life, a fairly narrow range of roles in the working world that we can enjoy with natural ease and mastery.

But just as our DNA makes each of us a one-of-a-kind individual with abilities to do certain kinds of things easily and happily, that same DNA and can make other tasks seem like pure torture. Aptitudes you were born with are completely different from acquired knowledge, skills, and interest. Over your lifetime, your interests can change. You can gain new skills and knowledge. But your natural, inherent talents remain with you for your entire life; and for the most part, Mother Nature, doesn’t let you change them except to improve upon them. 

Understanding Your Athlete DNA

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, a recipe, or a code since it contains the instructions needed to construct who you are. To become a highly competitive athlete, it’s safe to say you have terrific physical DNA that equips you with attributes like speed, quickness, intelligence, strength, etc. But what about your mental DNA… the stuff inside your head that makes you coachable, competitive, accountable, and a natural leader? Believe it or not, understanding what’s made you successful on the field will help you become successful in your career.

As with sports, the better you understand your unique genetic gifts, the more likely you can choose a satisfying and successful career. People are happiest when they combine their strongest abilities in a career that makes full use of all or most of them. The further people stray from using their natural gifts, the greater the chance they will be dissatisfied with their careers.

The following number of posts will take a closer look at the athlete DNA and why you need to understand just what makes you tick.

Get it together!

Inside the book and game of CareerBall:  Many competitive athletes make job or career transitions by accident. They do little other than take advantage of opportunities that may arise unexpectedly. If you truly believe you can find a job simply by leveraging your athletic experience and contacts, please think again… this is a myth, my friend!

We live in a post-industrial, high-tech society which requires employees to demonstrate both intelligence and concrete work skills—not just athletic accomplishments or a recommendation from important alumni. Lacking the necessary skills and mobility required for getting jobs in such high-tech, growth-oriented communities will be tough obstacles to overcome if all you have to show on your resume is a long history of touchdowns and team spirit.

Ultimately, you, like all student-athletes, will reach the point where your competitive collegiate career will draw to an end. Some will be ready for this transition, and others will not. If you want to be one of those who is on a happy path, plan in advance to make this transition a positive one.

Retirement from a full-time commitment for athletics does not have to be a depressing event. But it is important to acknowledge the occasional and growing unhappy path of athletes ending their sports careers, where depression is becoming more widespread because people have not developed additional outlets of expression and performance that they can continue throughout their lives. If you only participated in sports, you may be suffering from tunnel vision, and you simply must remember and constantly tell yourself that sports are really only a temporary obsession in the big-world picture.

It’s Time to Plan Ahead

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Try as we may to control our destiny, life is often tough, unpredictable, and serendipitous. What, for example, will your work life be like in another twelve or twenty-four months… or even five years from now? The old days when you can expect to work for one company most of your life have nearly vanished. Most people in today’s job market can realistically expect to undergo three to five career changes and hold more than fifteen different jobs during their lifetime. Long-term loyalty to a single employer is no longer expected, since many people change jobs and employers within a few years.

Athletes are accustomed to performing well. Sometimes they carry the standard of excellence with them into career exploration. Athletes may look at only jobs that they are familiar with or are confident about, usually careers in athletics. They’re confident in their ability to coach, for example, but less sure about careers in which they have no experience. It’s easy to forget that developing a career is really just like beginning a new sport; it requires practice, and the new steps may feel awkward at first.

Your goal is to find a job based on your strengths rather than your needs. Searching for a job is never fun, and if you’re fortunate, you’ll never have to search for many jobs in your life. But if you’re not experienced at looking for work or even thinking about work, the planning and search process can be arduous at best. 

The Power of Self-Responsibility, Part 3

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Many athletes have never conducted a well-organized job search on their own. Here are some of the new fundamentals that you will need to learn:

• What you want to do
• Where to start
• Whom to contact
• How to dress
• How to best network for job leads
• Which type of resume is best for your situation
• How to write winning resumes and letters
• Which Internet employment sites yield the best results
• How to answer and ask questions
• How a behavioral interview differs from a situational interview
• How to ask for the job
• Which follow-up methods work best
• How to negotiate salary in terms of employment

As a result of not being prepared to answer to these items, many athletes just stumble into the job market without much focus and make numerous mistakes along the way. It would be like going into a big game without ever having learned the rules of the sport.

The most effective job search methods require you to take self-responsibility for employment education and your future career. Very simply, what this means is that YOU—and only you—can put the proper priority on learning what it takes to launch and sustain a great career. 

The Power of Self-Responsibility, Part 2

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: As we age and acquire more information, our maturity level increases. Career maturity is an important aspect of your life and your self-responsibility. Career maturity has been defined as your ability to make appropriate career choices, including awareness of what is required to make a career decision and the degree to which your choices are both realistic and consistent over time.

Career maturity can also be defined as the extent to which you have planned for and acquired the necessary knowledge and skills to make intelligent, realistic career choices. Sadly, highly competitive athletes suffer from a low career maturity level as a result of the ever-increasing time commitments required by the competitive athletics in which they participate.

Athletes who start every game or who play the most minutes are oftentimes the ones who are not as prepared to learn the new skills required for an exceptionally great career. On the other hand, there are also many athletes who are very successful at not only playing their sport, but also taking self-responsibility for their career planning and career development. These people not only view themselves as talented athletes, but also as talented people. They have learned to parlay their sports success and life success into a meaningful new personal identity and are ready to compete off the playing field. They do not have tunnel vision and are ready to take self-responsibility!

The bottom line: Taking self-responsibility for learning effective career planning skills (skills you may not have thought about as important right now) will ultimately help you find careers and jobs that you truly enjoy. Along the way, you may still need to be lucky to land a great job or a rewarding career—but just like in sports, the coach was right when they explained to you that “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”

The Power of Self-Responsibility, Part 1

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: High school and college are primary involvements through which student-athletes learn to be self-responsible. Although your coaches and advisors will be watching your progress, no one will be there to monitor all your activities and decisions. You’ll have to be willing to take increasing amounts of responsibility for the consequences of your decisions and actions.

You also have to begin to take responsibility for motivating yourself. Although others can provide some external motivation (like coaches yelling, fans cheering, or red lights flashing in your rear view mirror), external motivators are usually less powerful than internal ones, and their impact tends to diminish when the motivators are no longer present. In turn, motivating yourself has a more lasting impact on your behavior and will lead to even greater persistence, conviction, and self-discipline—all things you will need as you embark on your career path.

If you’re reading this, you have probably already learned about self-responsibility and self-motivations, because no one is forcing you to read this chapter. You probably already know what works for you and what keeps your motivation strong through difficult or uncertain times. This means remaining interested in a task or having confidence when others doubt you and not letting others (or laziness) keep you from pursuing something that really interests you or is beneficial.

Beginning in college, you’ll have to take increasing amounts of responsibility for the consequences of your decisions and actions. Giving careful consideration to your interests, values, abilities, and personality style is a matter of self-responsibility, because no one else can truly make these assessments for you.

The Choices You Make Stay with You a Lifetime

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: As we discussed earlier, highly competitive athletes may experience a series of emotional, physical, social, and mental changes during a transition to CareerBall… changes that will have different intensity and impact depending on the individual. Coping mechanisms may include denial, isolation, substance abuse, or other negative behaviors. Retirement from sports is not easy, even if the athlete is ready. But a transition that is prepared for and welcomed, however, will usually generate less stress than one that is viewed negatively or approached poorly.

Career development is such an important aspect of life. Over the years, a ton of research has been conducted to explain the significance of career development. From the time we enter this world until the day we die, we will experience changes. Circumstances and unplanned events will force us to make informed (and some crazy) decisions about our career choices.

As you age, and at different stages throughout your life, there will be many factors that may contribute to and impact your career choices. These factors can fall into several categories including environmental, personal, family, financial, and health-related issues. Where you live, where you grew up, what your parents did for a living, who has influenced you, your money motivations, and physical capabilities are all in play when you make career choices.

During childhood, from a very early age, we began to identify skills, interests, likes, and dislikes. Pre-teens and teenagers begin preparing for their future by taking college preparatory courses in school and participating in educational and extracurricular programs like sports, car clubs, or drama. These experiences help you discover what you like to do, but it is difficult to interpret all of these experiences and nail your dream career 100 percent right from the start. It’s somewhat comforting to realize that throughout adulthood, we will change jobs and careers perhaps multiple times, relocate to new cities, and realize our dreams (or not) based on ever-changing personal factors and the career choices we make along the way.

Career development also involves being acutely aware of one’s personal goals, values, and work goals. It Involves continuously learning and applying new knowledge, taking advantage of opportunities, and taking risks in order to increase effectiveness and productivity on a personal level and for your organization.

Athletes are somewhat at a disadvantage to the non-athlete at the critical time of identifying the initial career signals. Why? Countless college athletes have asked me, ”Who has the time to worry about tomorrow when I’m head-down working out and competing and being the best I can be today!” I’ll try to be nice here, but this isn’t just being clueless… it’s pathologically dumb.

Your First Career

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: In many ways, sports are your first career. Some people have been lucky enough to just fall into the perfect job right as they finish their last minute of eligibility or leave their sport “for good.” But finding the right career need not depend solely on luck. Actively searching for the right career (often called a career plan) does require a great deal of preparation, planning, determination, and some luck. Career development is the processes of making good transition decisions in order to facilitate your dreams of a successful and rewarding career.

This is not to say that your participation in sports has been a waste of your time. For while you have been competing in athletics for most of your life, you’ve acquired many important skills and values that will serve you well in the future. It will serve you well to remember, though, that sports can be a dual-edged sword.

• On one side, sport can provide you with numerous opportunities to learn about yourself and others.
• On the other side, an exclusive commitment to sport can dominate your life so much that you won’t be prepared for any other activity.

You need to devote enormous amounts of time and energy to perfecting your athletic skills. If these efforts come at the expense of education or your preparation for other life activities, you may have nothing to turn to when you’re sport career ends.

It's a Scientific Fact

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: You should know a few things about being a highly competitive athlete that were not advertised in advance and are a downside of being an athlete in college.

First, researchers in sport psychology (the people who spend their lives studying these types of things), have conducted studies that support the notion that college athletes often compare unfavorably to non-athletes in terms of issues related to vocational and career development. Non-athletes have been found to score higher than athletes on measures of career maturity, vocational maturity, and the formulation of mature educational and career plans. These studies seem to indicate that college athletes experience less career development and maturity than non-athletes. Ouch!

These sports researchers also go on to introduce plausible reasoning why athletes compare unfavorably to non-athletes in early career development. One of the related factors that might influence an athlete’s level of career development is “athletic community,” which is defined as “the degree to which an individual identifies with the athlete role.” It appears that individuals who have a strong athletic identity place great importance on being involved in sport, which may actually hinder career development among athletes. More specifically, sports psychologists have hypothesized that athletes with a high athletic identity may engage in fewer exploratory behaviors, experience “identity foreclosure,” and perceive their “life role” as solely that of an athlete, which may inadvertently postpone career decisions.

Another plausible sports-related theory is that an "early life focus" on athletics is also a significant factor that inhibits career development. Athletes often develop a strong commitment to sports early in life through reinforcement from parents, coaches, and peers. Although a strong commitment to sports is certainly a desirable characteristic from an athletic point of view, many leading psychologists have theorized that such a strong commitment may be harmful in areas outside of sports, including career development.

What we do know as the truth today is that college athletes generally have more time constraints placed on them than non-athletes; for example, practice, training room time, road trips, film, study hall, nutrition, etc. Further, the life of a college athlete is often highly structured, with many important decisions made by others (e.g., coaches, academic coordinators, and team cultures). Taken together, these factors may cause the college athlete to feel that he or she is lacking in terms of tangible, practical, occupational information. Throw in the fact that most athletes never make professional ranks, and often a college sports commitment simply does not prepare an athlete for a career outside of athletics. As a result, college athletes lag behind their non-athlete peers in formulating career goals and plans.

You’re on Your Own Now

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: To be fair, we athletes have had it pretty easy… with a lot of help along the way. Our parents (who supported our initial efforts by making sure we were enrolled in sports) made the try-outs, drove us everywhere, fought the politics of all-star teams, and were always emotionally invested in our early success, even if they didn’t make all our games all the time.

Our coaches have also been there along every step of the way, whether it was our club coach, high school coach, or even our uncles, grandmother, or skill coaches—whomever looked after us as we participated in our sports career along the way. College, nowadays, is also very much invested in our sports: special recruitment packages, pre-enrollment, class tutors, life-skills training… you name it, colleges today provide most every athlete with some type of assistance.

If you made the professional ranks or even the elite amateur teams that travel the world, handlers and agents and managers all work hard behind the scenes so all you have to do is compete. What a life!

But then, reality sets in. Sports are over, and all the coaches, agents, administrators, handlers, and, sadly, even some parents, vanish… leaving you with a depressing feeling of starting over. And this time when you glance behind you to check on your entourage, you may realize you’re on your own!

Let’s Put this Transition into Perspective

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: There are generally two distinct camps that competitive athletes fall into when the subject of career planning is raised:

• Those that screw up, screw around, or just don’t care enough and eventually “evolve” into their careers, and 
• Those that “get it” early on in the process, identify their talents, and point themselves in the right direction.

By far, the biggest challenge you will face as a competitive athlete is determining which camp you are in.

Although there will be many transitions in your life, few have the potential to be as important or challenging as ending your competitive playing career. At some point, every student-athlete ends his or her competitive career. For many, this event will coincide with the completion of their athletic eligibility—what might be called a planned or expected transition. For others, though, termination of their sports careers may be unexpected, caused by things like career-ending injuries or being cut from the team or a simple loss of interest in the chase.

Although you may not be close to the end of your high school, college or professional athletic career, it is never too soon to begin planning for your transition out of sports. Begin thinking now about what you want to do after sports career has ended, and then take action to move towards that goal. 

The Old Way vs. The New Way

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Many of you will also be old enough (or wise enough) to see how times have changed in the average “athlete-centric life-cycle.” In the past, the old athlete-centric lifecycle went something like this:

• Grow up (eventually)
• Play many sports (for fun)
• Become really good at one sport (or two, or three)
• Go to college and play ball (have fun for 4 years)
• Graduate (usually)
• Get a career (something really terrific and rewarding)
• Get married (once, or twice if you’re lucky)
• Raise a family (or two)
• Retire (after 25+ years at the same company and a nice pension with benefits)
• And, lastly, here’s the good part… then die and go to heaven (hopefully)

Today, the new athlete-centric lifecycle we experience goes something like this:

• Grow up (faster than ever)
• Play one sport exclusively (join the 10 & under travelling team)
• Try to avoid burnout on sports (usually around age 17)
• Go pro or go to college and play ball (work your butt off year-round until you quit or are cut)
• Graduate (maybe, after 6 years)
• Get a job (and then about 10 more and 3 different careers over your lifetime)
• Get married (maybe, once, or twice if you’re lucky)
• Raise a family (if that’s your thing and you have the time/money)
• Retire (after 40+ years funding your own retirement plan and rising health care costs)
• And, lastly, here’s the really good part… then die and go to heaven (hopefully)

Game On!

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: The time has come whereby everybody associated with competitive athletics—administrators, coaches, parents… even YOU!—need to wake up, step up, and commit to your career in ways you may have never thought of or have been told about. And the earlier you do this in your athletic life, the better.

On the whole, society has just come off a decade of entitlement and instant gratification, in which a worldwide attitude of “What’s in it for me?” was the general attitude held by most athletes. The world today is a very different place. Now, athletes are asking the question: “What’s going on, and how will it affect me?” The simple answer is that times have changed. The more complex answer that is as an athlete-centric culture, we have been asleep at the wheel, caught up in believing that a 100 percent commitment to organized sports would always produce a great outcome in our life. But sadly, unless you’re making seven figures a year and signed to a multi-year deal, being a good athlete is no guarantee that you will succeed in your career after sports… or even find a job, for that matter.

I love the saying “Instant gratification takes too long” and I agree. But there is no escaping the fact that you will have to commit nearly the same amount of time, energy, and self-responsibility you applied to sports if you want to be just as successful in your career.

Times Have Changed

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: I have been advising thousands of highly competitive athletes on how to prepare for the proverbial “life after sports”… and help them make the most of their career choices and opportunities. The main core of my advice centers around two central themes:

• First, you must thoroughly understand the vast array of “transferable skills” acquired through athletic experiences and how to leverage them in your job search and career, and, 

• Second, you must thoroughly understand, and commit to a list of fundamental disciplines about self-assessment, going about your job search and career growth in the correct (and intelligent) fashion, and seeking out and learning from others who have successfully traversed the road before you. 

It’s important to realize that we are now living in times where most of the rules have changed… especially when it comes to the timing of making important life decisions and nurturing a meaningful career. In the old days (around ten years ago or so) career planning and career development was rewarded mostly by just showing up to the interview. Today, though, career planning and development requires more preparation and effort, and a little luck. The bottom line is, today, if you want to achieve success in your career, the fundamentals are still the same as they were yesterday but you must begin to think about your career much earlier in life and remember that preparation and effort are key, most important ingredients.

“Welcome to the rest of your life… ”

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: "...and welcome, I might add, to one of the most critical challenges facing most competitive athletes".

It’s a known fact that many competitive athletes are not well prepared for the transitional challenges that face them as they move from playing on a team to the highly competitive work world. But I have worked with thousands of competitive athletes over the years, and the one thing that stands out in almost every athlete I’ve met is that athletes, in general, are very talented men and women capable of achieving any goal they set their mind towards.

While it sounds scary, the transition to the work world after an exciting career of competitive athletics should (and will) be one of the most enjoyable periods in your life. Most importantly of all, most of you will find jobs and enjoy plentiful careers that build on your positive attitudes, strengths, and values and utilize many of the skills that helped form you into a successful athlete in the first place.

Whether or not your transition from athlete-to-career will be stressful will depend on a couple of important factors:

• First, how do you perceive the transition? For example, do you see this termination as a beginning with exciting new challenges and opportunities to be enjoyed, or do you view it in your sports career as a significant loss, leaving you devastated, disoriented, and without direction or meaning in your life?

• Second, what is your identification with the athlete role? Student-athletes who identify strongly with multiple roles (such as those of athlete, student, family member, and significant other) are more likely to cope effectively with the transition than those who see themselves solely as an athlete.

Tunnel Vision Syndrome

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: Here's the bitch of it in a nutshell: the transition that men and women competitive athletes must make from a lifetime of sports to the working world does not come as easily as hitting a ball, running a play, or achieving your best time. As an athlete, this difficult transition can be the biggest emotional and psychological challenge that you will face in your lifetime—one for which you might oftentimes be unprepared, and one in which there is little wise advice and counsel from that ever-present “coach” you’ve had by your side since the Pee Wee leagues.

A “tunnel vision syndrome” affects all highly competitive athletes to varying degrees at some stage of their lives. Parents can see it, high school coaches and college athletic administrators can see it, professional sports agents and general managers see it… and, yes, hiring managers see it at companies large and small all across America. Unfortunately, athletes who are unaware that they suffer from tunnel vision spend way too much time thinking only about sports (training, competition, etc.) and, as a result, young athletes are left ill-prepared for the balanced perspective required of “real world” career opportunities. Some call this behavior crazy or blind, some call it self-centered, and some call it selfish. I call it “tunnel vision.” But no matter what you call it, the effect of this kind of one-track thinking is the same… and you have to snap out of it!

Welcome to CareerBall

CareerBall a good game to learn—fun, exciting, fast-paced, high-scoring, competitive… and the best part? You’re never too young to learn it! CareerBall is what you learn to play after you’ve mastered competitive baseball, football, or basketball (and any sport that has a ball, a court, a field, a pool, or even a coach), but long before you get to play the game called PayCheckBall—the game that pays the bills, fuels the car, stocks the refrigerator, and lets you move out of your parents’ house.

The good news/bad news part of this blog and my book, CareerBall, is pretty simple: Being a competitive athlete most of your life thus far has provided you with a slew of valuable ”soft skills” that are easily transferred to the workplace, and you’re about to learn what it takes to make the most of this transition. But, sadly, being a highly competitive athlete has also left you somewhat unprepared, or “behind-the-curve” in your job search and career prep skills.

Follow this blog and almost every day you will get a small dose of insight into what makes up an athlete's DNA, learn some of the steps you can take improve your own persoanl career development, and learn about the latest employment trends emerging in this new marketplace. Let's pay some CareerBall!

Out of many, we are one!

Inside the book and game of CareerBall: At any given time, over 400,000 young men and women actively participate in collegiate athletics, or at the elite international or professional level in the United States. Millions more are active in high school sports. Each of these athletes will ultimately make the transition from the structured life of high school, college, and competitive athletics to jobs and careers that will fulfill their life’s potential. For many, this transitional period will be navigated gracefully and without incident; for many others it will be a confusing and frustrating experience.

CareerBall is dedicated to all the competitive athletes, their parents, coaches and administrators that are committed to understanding and achieving a life-balance between succeeding in athletics and successfully preparing for life after sports.