An Athlete's Guide to Reclaiming Joy

Sean texted me the night before our weekly time for discipleship. He made an important decision and wanted to talk about it tomorrow. When he arrived that morning, he tossed his backpack to the floor and set his Bible on the table. 

“Brian, I’m telling my coach today that I’m done. I don’t want to play anymore.”

I asked why, knowing the answer before I even asked the question. Sometimes athletes just need to hear themselves say it out loud and own it.

“It’s just not fun anymore.”

“When was the last time it was actually fun for you?” I asked.

Again, I knew the answer because I knew his story. 

Sean is an athletic freak. As he gets older, he’s going to be one of those super annoying friends who you can never beat at anything—because he is great at everything. 

Sean received a full ride scholarship to play Division I soccer. He started his freshman year and showed the promise his coaches hoped for when they recruited him. But then he got injured. The road to recovery was slow. By the time he was back at full strength during his sophomore year, another player took his spot as he spent practice after practice trying to prove himself to his coaches. 

When he finally got an opportunity to compete, his coach grabbed him before he checked in the game and whispered, “Don’t screw this up.”

His coach said it, but he most likely heard those words in his dad’s voice. Sean’s dad loves his son. But he expresses that love the most when Sean is excelling at the sport he “encouraged” his son to play. Sean loved hockey. He was really good at baseball too. But he played soccer because his dad told him his ceiling as an athlete was the highest as a soccer player. Wanting to please his dad, he retired his dreams to play hockey or baseball early in high school. 

Sean is not different from many of the athletes my wife and I have discipled over the years. The details and characters in the stories may differ, but the tipping point consistently revolves around a loss of joy experienced during practice and competition. 

The issue is not overly complex. It usually comes down to the same problem: the athlete grows tired of playing for someone else. 

There’s a tension here that we need to address too. Because of the business of sport, where jobs are on the line if the losses keep stacking up, your sport will probably never reach the level of “fun” that you had when you first started playing. If that’s the dangling carrot you’re hoping to catch, I’m not certain (at least for most athletes) that’s actually possible. But that certainly does not mean we should practice and compete in silent misery—it’s just a healthy reality we need to keep in mind. 

How can athletes begin to reclaim some of the love for their sport that existed when they first picked up a ball or jumped into a pool? How can they turn the tide of constant frustration and begin a trajectory towards joy that transcends the circumstances surrounding them? 

What follows is for any athlete who is tired, frustrated, and on the precipice of quitting their sport because it’s no longer fun. These are not fix-your-problem-promises, but principles to put to the test. Perhaps one or two of them may spark the little kindling of joy you have left in your athletic tank. 

Pray for joy

Have you prayed to experience joy while you practice or compete? In Luke 11:9-12, Jesus tells his disciples: 

“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?”

I love how often God is identified in the Bible as our Father. It helps me to think of Him in relational dynamics that I can understand. If my own son asked me if I could help him experience happiness while he was shooting hoops in our backyard—and it was in my power to do so—I would answer that prayer with a “Yes!” just about every time. 

Too often we look for joy in sport through affirmation from parents, coaches, teammates, or fans. It’s dependent on others’ response to our performance. Try asking your heavenly Father to experience joy while you play. Consider a prayer like this:

“Father, I just want to have fun playing again. I believe one of the reasons you created sport is because you enjoy it when your children play. And playing isn’t fun for me anymore. You know the reasons why better than I do. Would you help release me of the pressure I am feeling and free me internally to experience joy while I play again?” 

Practice gratitude

Reclaiming your joy during sport is partly your responsibility too. You can best position yourself towards a trajectory of joy by practicing gratitude. Notice I didn’t say “by being grateful.” Gratitude is not just a feeling or a state of being. It’s an intentional action. 

Aside from the Bible encouraging us to be thankful, studies show that people who practice gratitude are generally more happy, healthy, and optimistic about life.

Despite the encouragement that God and our culture give us to be grateful—and the many reasons athletes specifically have—it can be hard to practice gratitude in the midst of the daily grind of our sport. Our ability to be grateful often ebbs and flows with the circumstances in front of us.

Gratitude is like a muscle—it gets stronger if we consistently give it attention and push it beyond its level of comfort. Conversely, if we fail to exercise it consistently, our ability to be thankful atrophies. It needs to become a habit.

In his latest book, Your Future Self Will Thank You, Drew Dyck talks about the importance of habits: “The key to living a holy life isn’t simply to out-battle temptation at every turn. It’s to build righteous patterns into your life. It’s achieved through habits.”

Athletes, we need to intentionally build habits that will grow the muscle of gratitude in our lives. Our joy during sport depends on it. I’ve outlined 8 habits worth implementing in a blog titled 8 Habits of a Grateful Athlete.

Perspective

Psalm 42 provides great insight into what the deepest part of our soul truly desires. It’s a playbook towards joy. The first two verses explain:

“As a deer pants for flowing streams,

    so pants my soul for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God,

    for the living God.

When shall I come and appear before God?”

This is the default state of our soul. One that constantly and consistently longs for God and will never be fulfilled without him. Our soul pants (longs or cries out) for God as a deer pants for streams of water. 

Let’s think of this in athletic imagery. Think back to a time playing or practicing your sport when you were physically exhausted. You bonked and hit the wall. Remember what it felt like to have all that energy expended. 

What you experienced physically in that moment is the default state of our soul apart from God. It’s our experience spiritually without his presence. 

And In that moment of physical exhaustion, what do you need? Your body cries out for it. WATER. Sure you need rest, food...maybe a nap. But what you need most is water. God hardwired our bodies this way. 

But it has to be the right kind of water. There is a reason we don’t replenish our bodies with an energy drink called ocean-aide. The ocean is salty. It has the opposite effect on us. Sure, it looks pleasing and almost exactly the same as the water we drink. The ocean is full of glory and wonder. And it is highly beneficial when we use it for the right things. Traveling across. Playing in. Cooling off. Peaceful to the eyes. Fishing. Surfing.  

But if all we do is those things—and expect it to nourish and satisfy our bodies as well—we die. 

What does this have to do with reclaiming joy in sports?

This one may be a little hard to hear so if you need to brace yourself, now would be the time: sports will never satisfy your ultimate longing for lasting joy. They just can’t. Sports bring us plenty of benefits, but ultimate satisfaction is not one of them. The Bible tells us why. Ecclesiastes 3:11 mentions that “he has put eternity into man's heart.” This is profound and it agrees with what we see in Psalm 42:1-2. A heart with an eternal longing can only be truly filled by an eternal God. He put the longing in our heart for him. And in turn, we try to fill the void through athletic endeavors. 

Here’s some good news. Your sport can still be fun. You can still experience joy as you practice and compete. But you need a perspective that’s grounded in the reality that sports have a ceiling on the amount of joy they can bring.

So, athlete, when your joy seems lost and you dread waking up to practice for whatever reason, remember this:

The longing inside of you to reclaim joy is good. God put it there. And he wants you to reclaim it too.

But just as you wouldn’t run to the ocean to satisfy your thirst, don’t look to your sport to satisfy your ultimate soulful longings. God wants to do that. Again, what does this have to do with reclaiming joy in sport? 

When you release sport from the pressure to be everything for you, I think it frees you up to experience it as God originally intended it to be: an avenue of play to enjoy (joy), be refined (sanctification), and invest into others (mission). 

Enjoy it for what it is and release it from the expectation you may have put on it to fix everything in your life. 

Present

I don’t want to oversimplify this, but maybe some of you spend too much time thinking about what has happened or what will happen instead of living in and enjoying the present day. I think there’s enough in God’s word to support a mindset that fully engages in the present, but perhaps no better evidence than what we see in Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” What if you tried appreciating the present day instead of dwelling on the past performances or worrying about the future opportunities? 

If today is indeed the day that the LORD has made, how can you rejoice and be glad in it? 

Try starting your day with a prayer like this and then pay attention to how God answers it:

“Father, thank you for THIS day. You know my tendency to reflect back on the past and think forward to the future. But I want to be fully present today and rejoice and be glad in it. Would you help me to do that? God, would you help me to see things in your creation that I normally miss? Would you help me to hear things that my busy mind usually mutes out? Would you help me to enjoy the taste of food and drink? And God...my sport...would you help me to enjoy it today by giving me a peace that transcends all understanding? Thank you for this day!”

Pray something like that to start your day. If you’re anything like me, 5 minutes later you will think about something from yesterday and ponder about something tomorrow. That’s ok. You’re human. The goal is not perfection, it’s progress. And the finish line is not getting to a place where you neglect the past or future. There is wisdom in what they both bring. This is about appreciating the amazing gift that God has given us through this day and choosing to be glad in it. 

One final thought pertaining to being present: the purposeful strategy in staying present is allowing the beauty of the present to point us to joy in God. Pastor and author Paul David Tripp says it this way:

“Only two types of glory exist—sign glory and ultimate glory. Sign glory is all the wondrous display of sights, sounds, colors, textures, tastes, smells, and experiences of the physical world that God created. These glories were not designed to satisfy your heart. Rather, all of creation was designed to be one big sign that points you to the One of ultimate glory who alone has the power to give you life and to satisfy your heart...He designed his world to point to him, not to replace him.”

That last sentence is one worth clinging to and remembering. Athlete, our joy decreases when we lose sight of this reality. The problem is not your coach. The problem is not your parents. The problem is not your lack of playing time or poor performance. If you lack joy, fixing all of those temporary problems will not permanently solve the main issue.

Seek joy from the Source that created it, delights in it, and delights in you—and trust that in His perfect timing—and for His glory—He will help you to enjoy the sport you play...because you have learned to enjoy Him first.