During your career as an athlete, you will eventually be faced with a difficult decision. Difficult decisions for athletes can be picking the right team, finding the right agent, dealing with injuries, or navigating the balance between your personal and athletic lives.

Many athletes don’t have the resources or environment to face these decisions. So, this week, we’re breaking down important principles for an athlete’s decision making.

At the end of the day, athletics are a business. Even in team sports, everyone has their own incentives.

None of this makes them bad people. It just means their goals overlap with yours sometimes, and not other times. You need to know when they do, and when they don’t

Before any big decision, ask one question about everyone advising you: what are their incentives?

A coach asking you to play through an injury may truly believe in you. He also needs a win on Saturday. An agent pushing you to sign quickly may be right. He also gets paid when you sign. Neither is automatically wrong, but you should know which part of the advice is about you and which part is about them.

The only person whose incentives line up with your career 100% of the time is you.

Many athletes instinctively choose the “biggest” opportunity. The best team. The biggest league.

Being valued shows up in specifics, not compliments. Before you choose, look for:

If an opportunity can’t answer those, the name on the jersey won’t make up for it.

The biggest opportunity is the one that will help your career.

Life as an athlete can change very quickly, and the decision you thought was right at the time can turn out to be very challenging. Maybe the coach that liked you leaves and is replaced by a coach that doesn’t.

More important than making the perfect choice is making the most out of your environment and the choice that you did make.

Treat your decisions as a GPS. When you miss a turn, it doesn’t tell you to go back to the start. It reroutes from where you are.

Once you commit to a decision, the situation changes. And because of that, your focus should go from making the right choice to controlling all of your variables. Your training. Your attitude.

Often times athletes struggle not because they chose wrong, but because they are still replaying their decisions.

And if it really doesn’t work out after you’ve given it everything, it isn’t failure. It’s information for your next decision.

You’ll rarely make a big decision with perfect information. Nobody does. But you can:

Grow Beyond Sport.

This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute to personalized career, legal, or financial advice.