The Athlete's Inner Game
Most athletes love their sport. That’s not the problem.
The problem is when love of the sport quietly becomes something else — when the sport stops being something you do and starts being everything you are. When your mood is entirely determined by how practice went. When a bad game doesn’t just disappoint you but unmakes you. When the thought of losing this sport is the same as the thought of losing yourself.
That shift happens gradually. And most athletes don’t notice it until something forces the question.
Read this passage slowly.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Psalm 139:13–14 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
The psalm is about being known before performance was ever possible. God knit you together before you played a single game, ran a single rep, or produced a single result. Your inmost being — the part of you that is most fundamentally you — precedes all of that. It was formed before anyone was watching.
What that means is that your worth is not a product of your performance. It was established before your performance existed. The fearfully and wonderfully made reality is prior to everything the scoreboard can say about you.
When sport becomes the whole identity, what happens to that prior reality? It gets buried. The wonderfully made person starts to believe they’re only valuable when they produce. And the cruelty of that belief is that no amount of production ever fully satisfies it. The athlete whose identity is entirely in their sport is always one bad game away from a crisis of self.
The athlete whose identity is rooted in something prior to performance plays differently. They can risk more because they have less to lose. They can fail without being destroyed because the failure doesn’t reach the thing that’s most true about them. They can hold the sport with open hands because they know who they are without it.
That athlete is not less competitive. They’re actually more free to compete fully. Because they’re not protecting their identity every time they step on the field.
The athlete whose identity is rooted in something prior to performance has less to lose and more freedom to compete.
When your performance is bad, what story do you tell yourself about who you are? Is that story true?
This question exposes the inner narrative athletes carry. The answers are usually very honest and often painful. Hold them with care.
You were fearfully and wonderfully made before the first game. That’s still true after the last one.
This devotional is particularly effective after a significant loss or during a slump when athletes are most likely conflating performance with identity.