MONTREAL, Canada – As I sat on the balcony of my hotel in Montreal two Saturday mornings ago, flipping through and answering as many questions as I could on our most recent Mailbag episode of SANDCAST, one particular query caught me off guard: “Who out of all the players you’ve talked with has the best way to deal with their mental health with being a professional athlete?”
Mental health is a prominent discussion in the sports space, and the world at large. Somehow, though, I don’t recall ever receiving a question about it on the podcast. The answer I gave was clunky — as it goes with many an unprepared answer — but directionally accurate: The athletes I know who are Christian, or religious or spiritual in some way, are some of the soundest from a mental health standpoint that I know.
My mind turned over new thoughts as I spoke, and soon I was referencing Viktor Frankl and his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, as well as the power of a simple gratitude journaling practice. It wasn’t a smooth answer, but a Verse of the Day from the Bible app on Friday morning, nudged me to go a little deeper into it.
In chapter 3, verse 1 of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he writes: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above…”
Ancient wisdom inevitably prevails, and the latter half of that sentence is, effectively, the closest thing to a silver bullet I know of when it comes to mental health: Seek those things which are above.
When your mind turns to something “above” or bigger than the score of your game, the result of your match, the finish in your most recent tournament, suddenly that score, those results, the finish, impacts you less. Your zoomed out perspective gives you a valuable reference point to how little, in the grander scheme of life, that game or tournament is.
But isn’t that game or tournament or match important? Of course!
Sports are, in the case of the athletes in question, their livelihood. Where they find fulfillment and satisfaction and meaning and, in many cases, where they provide for themselves and their families.
But are they everything?
Hardly.
From a Christian point of view, it is comical to think that God might wag his divine finger at us and shake his head in shame because we finished third, instead of first, at the Manhattan Beach Open. That he might demote us to a lesser rank in His Kingdom because we were upset in Montreal. That he would sigh in resignation because the color of the medal isn’t the one we sought, or if we medaled at all.
Such would never be the case.
Because sports – or your job, whatever it may be — are simply the means, the platform, to represent you and your values. They are, as King Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes, hevel, matters under the sun, and to place an outsize value on them is to chase the wind.
Our focus, our mission, then, if we are to thrive in our time on Earth, is to seek matters eternal, to prioritize that which occurs above the sun.
“So many of you are pouring your life into things under the sun. Things that don’t matter. You’re living as if life under the sun is really what counts,” JD Greer, pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, said on a recent sermon. “A lot of you are giving your life away to things that won’t eternally matter.
“Your investment dies here.
“Only two things in life will last forever, and that’s the souls of men and the word of God. So make sure you build your life around those. Build your life around eternal things.”
And when you focus on the eternal, your life, in its own way, becomes transcendent.
Is Christianity, or even religion in general, the only vehicle through which to achieve this transcendence, the only manner in which to latch onto the eternal?
No, it is simply my choice, one that has worked for me and several others I know with a robust mental health, namely Kelly Cheng, Megan Kraft, Julia Donlin, Lexy Denaburg, Hailey Harward, and many others.
One of the most mentally resolute individuals I know is Tri Bourne. In a decade of knowing Tri, through autoimmune diseases and setbacks and incredible stressors, I never once saw his mental health waver.
He isn’t Christian, nor religious in any specific or dogmatic way. But he does have a reverence for nature that is profound if not religious in its own right, and he carves out huge swaths of time, whenever he can, to immerse himself in it. It is not coincidental that I most regularly find and commune with God, in my own way, when I’m in nature – sipping coffee on the front porch, sitting on a surfboard at sunrise, walking through the mountains. When I was coaching Evan Cory, I made it mandatory that, every four weeks, he spend a weekend either camping or taking some sort of nature trip, one where screens were put to an absolute minimum.
One where something bigger, something real, was the focus.
That was my main takeaway, and the general takeaway from those who have read Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning when he developed his theory of Logotherapy, which emphasizes finding meaning in life as a primary motivational force for wellbeing. The central concepts of his theory include freedom of choice, self-transcendence and the ability to find meaning under any circumstance.
Christianity, and religion in general, for me and many others, is where I find meaning under any circumstance.
“The whole point is that what we want is to have these experiences where we can stand in awe, where we can get outside ourselves, which is religious experiences, spiritual experiences, philosophical experiences, experiences of service and love toward other people unbidden by any self-interest,” said Arthur Brooks, who teaches leadership and the science of human happiness at Harvard, on a recent appearance on Chris Williamon’s podcast, Modern Wisdom. “That’s where life gets really interesting and beautiful, and when you do that, when you really get into a transcendent state, meaning finds you.
“When people ask me about finding meaning in life, I say ‘Go volunteer, go pray… I don’t care if you’re not religious, go pray. When you do that, you’ll induce a state in your brain, and you’ll want to do it more.”
You’ll seek things above, and not get troubled by the things below.
You’ll transcend.
