The Position Change

You’ve been moved.

Not cut. Not benched. Moved to a different position. Which sounds like it should be easier to accept than those other things — but it often isn’t, because the position you played was part of how you understood yourself as a player. The years of work you put in were pointed at a specific role. And now they’ve pointed you somewhere else.

Let’s talk about what that actually takes.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

God has placed the parts in the body just as he wanted them to be. Not just as the player wanted. Not based on the player’s self-assessment. Just as he wanted them to be. The placement is intentional — and it is not always where the person being placed would have chosen.

A position change touches the ego in a specific way. It says: the coaches see something different in you than you see in yourself. They may be wrong — coaches are not infallible. But they may also be right. They may see a capacity in you that your previous position was hiding. They may see a need in the team that you are uniquely suited to fill, even if you didn’t volunteer for it.

The player who fights a position change because it threatens their ego loses twice. They spend energy resisting the placement instead of mastering it, and they confirm to the coaching staff that the selfishness of their investment in the old position is going to follow them to the new one.

The player who accepts the placement and brings full investment to the new position — who decides that the team’s need for them in this role is a real need worth meeting — often discovers abilities they didn’t know they had. The new position reveals something. Let it.

The honest naming of the specific loss is more useful than a general acceptance speech. Let the player name it before moving to the acceptance.