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.”