What is your Why? | Center for Sport Psychology and Athlete Mental Health
April 29, 2020

What is your Why?

When we work with athletes and teams, we often ask them that question…what is your why? We do so to help them find meaning again in what they are doing, to reconnect with what motivates them internally, to possibly make different choices in what they choose to do…it can be easy in a busy, chaotic, stressful world to shift into doing and surviving mode and lose sight of what is important to us, what grounds us, excites us, connects us…what gives us purpose.

So for today, if you want, turn off all those other things that distract you and allow yourself some time to consider the question…what is your why? As you do, write down your thoughts and feelings…record them on your phone…they don't have to be perfectly written or spoken…you can refine them later. Just start expressing what is important to you, what gives you and your life meaning.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps and went on to write about his experiences and the importance of finding meaning, even in the worst of circumstances. In his famous book, Man's Search for Meaning, he writes:

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

What will be your meaning? What will be your way?

Take care and be #PhysicallyDistantSociallyClose