Athlete Mental Health Tips for Balancing Sports and Life

Everyone can relate to the feeling of pressure. Athletes, in particular, feel a constant need to somehow strike a balance between sports and life.  This pressure can cause mental health issues to arise because there is a multitude of components that get squeezed into sports and life at all levels. There’s surely always something going on, which makes balancing sports and life tough.

Being an active player at any level is an incredible gift that I think most athletes cherish, but it’s not always a pretty day-to-day road that they travel.

Pressures on Student Athletes

At the most rudimentary level all the way through college, student athletes face their own set of pressures. Many people assume that younger athletes play only for fun because it’s not yet a “job.” Well, that may be true, but athletes face a ton of expectations to develop faster and stronger than ever before, particularly if they want to advance to the next level of his or her sport, and that pressure only increases as they move forward.

In an interview with Social Brain Blog, Dr. Steve Graef, a sport and performance psychologist at The Ohio State University, said…

“There is general stress, and then there is a deeper worry: How is my performance going to reflect on myself? What is coach thinking of me?”

Dr. Graef was referring to the transition from high school to college, but these types of worries are applicable at all levels. (Read the interview. It’s a great one.)

Add this to having to mature and develop yourself as an individual while having to achieve certain accolades in school, maintain healthy relationships with family and peers, travel for games, develop a personal brand for college and beyond, and for some, do it all under financial pressure, it’s no wonder that more and more athletes are coming forward with mental health issues.

Pressures on Pro Athletes

Pro athletes have the obvious pressure of playing at the top level, developing their sports IQ, getting along with teammates, dealing with media, and the incredibly strenuous training, travel, and playing schedule that goes along with it. Not only are pro athletes expected to play at a certain level, they are also expected to be healthy and take as much care as possible not to get injured. And if they are injured, that adds a whole new level of pressure to get back on the court or field. On top of it all, everything that they lay their bodies on the line for is just a business and they might feel more like a commodity than a person.

Outside of their time with the team, pro athletes might also have a family and kids who depend on them and want to spend time with them; financial decisions that affect their future and the future of those they love; being a role model; social media chatter; life after sports; and so on and so on.

Balancing Sports and Life

Pressure in life never stops because we all have to do things that aren’t always easy to do in order to get the things we want and need. For athletes, balancing sports and life can feel impossible at times. What you can do is use a combination of action, mindset, and self-care to align all of your priorities to the best of your ability. Even though they all intertwine with one another, they can each be addressed individually to create a holistic plan.

Here’s how to create more balance…

Action – First and foremost it’s important to realize that the world, and our lives, will never be perfectly balanced. There will always be something that you spend more time on than other things simply because that’s where your focus and energy requires you to be in order to achieve what it is that you want to achieve.

If, however, you’re feeling off balance, here are some questions you can ask yourself:

• What are my most important goals right now?
• What are my priorities?
• Do my goals and my priorities match up?
• Where am I spending the majority of my time?
• How is that benefitting me?
• In what area(s) do I feel like I’m not spending enough time?
• Why do I feel that way? Who or what is causing me to feel that way?
• If I were to take one thing off of my plate in order to achieve my goals, what would that be?
• If I were to say “no” to one thing in order to gain more balance in my schedule, what would that be?

Asking questions like these can help you gain insight into what action you need to take, even if that action is to eliminate something. Remember: Never, ever, sacrifice your self-care time. No one ever said that you had to sacrifice and struggle 24/7 in order to achieve your goal. Your body needs rest to repair and so does your mind.

Mindset – Imbalance and pressure are a part of the world we live in. Spiritually speaking, you can theoretically reach a place where you are unbothered by anyone or anything. I’m not discouraging that practice, however, no one is perfect and if your life is that of an athlete, feelings of pressure and imbalance are completely normal.

You might not be able to escape feeling pressure at all times, but you can choose what you want to do with it. The awesome thing about mindset is that you get to choose your perspective. A mental health professional can help you work through discovering and breaking negative thought patterns as well as developing new thought patterns.

Here is a series of questions you can ask yourself when you feel pressure:

• Who/what is putting pressure on me?
• What is causing me the most stress?
• Why am I allowing it?
• What if I choose to not let that pressure me?
• What would that look like? How would that feel?
• What do I want instead?
• How can I still pursue my goals and manage stress/pressure?
• What can I do to achieve that?

Keep in mind that mindset and action might include saying, “no,” which many people don’t do because they fear letting someone down. The person you say “no” to may not love it initially, but they’ll get over it. You’re the only one who has to live your life.

Self-care – In the “action” section above, I mentioned self-care. This is imperative to balance. I wholeheartedly believe in attacking any problem from the inside out meaning that if you feel unbalanced, the resolution begins from within.

The key is that no one can do that for you. You can’t outsource self-care. Suffering is not a badge of honor. (To clarify, I don’t mean suffering as a victim in an uncontrolled circumstance, I mean suffering due to choices you make because you think life has to be hard to be successful.) Be protective of your self-care and disciplined about personal development, which includes breaks and believe it or not, doing nothing.

If you’re having trouble with your self-care (hint: you feel lost and pulled in a million directions), ask yourself the following questions:

• What places or activities make me feel the most relaxed?
• What would I like to improve on with myself?
• How can more self-care time help support that?
• Where in my schedule can I block out a time to do nothing but relax and rest?
• If I had to add one self-care task to my schedule every week, what would that be?
• If I had to add one self-care task to my schedule every day, what would that be?
• Who can hold me accountable for taking time for my self-care?
• What might my life look like if I took more time for self-care? How would I feel?
• Why is my self-care worth the time investment?

Need more help with balancing sports and life? Contact me about coaching.

Also, download the Athlete Mental Health Playbook, which is a guidebook to help with mental wellness for players. Don’t worry, it’s free.