From "small kid time" to the culmination of their athletic careers, student athletes are being pulled, pushed, and manipulated to think, feel and act as others think they should. The general public wants winners, parents focus on achievement, coaches motivate and manipulate, peers increase the pressure, high schools and towns want heroes, colleges and alumni build legends, and the media is selling a good story.

All of these segments of the population, however well meaning or well intentioned place young people who enter the arena of competitive athletics at risk for a feeling that only their performance matters, and for failing to realize the wide-reaching benefits of their athletic careers.

There is pressure to perform in a specific way, pressure to "buy" into the program, and pressure to win. The pressure can be so subtle that it operates only in the subconscious or it can be overt and harsh.

This pressure can create internal conflict that leads to confusion and pain for the athlete. In extreme cases, student athletes feel victimized, bitter, and defeated. When this happens, a large portion of the energy these students (and their coaches and parents) have expended has been wasted. This waste of energy represents a needless and shameful loss of human potential.

The career of each student athlete involves the opportunity to move from one level of competence and competition to the next. Each level has the potential for enormous learning and growth.

As the masses of student athletes enter the youth leagues, there is a selection process that rewards talent and potential. The skilled and strong move on to the next level; the not-so-skilled and not-so-strong get cut. The elite complete their careers at the top of the game and may go on to professional arena; the rest just finish up and move on to other challenges.

In either case, whether the athlete is merely an enthusiastic participant or one who has the potential to make a career of their avocation, the right kind of athletic education assures that the students learn the positive lessons that athletics can teach. The right kind of education is Total Person Education (TPE), training that recognizes that the student athlete is not merely a physical body but also a mind, a spirit and a soul. Those who aren't involved in programs that employ a TPE model, including even the skilled, strong and elite are left to try to figure out what happened to them.

Athletics is given credit for building character, teaching life-skills, producing successful leaders, and having a huge potential for carry-over value. In reality, the effect that athletics has on a young person's life has much to do with the intentions of the people involved. Student athletes should be treated with respect and dignity. Administrators and coaches should put the well-being of the student athletes first, ahead of the need to win, the need to advance their own careers, or the need to make money.

What follows is an example of a presentation on athletics that is grounded in the understanding of the student athlete as a whole, multifaceted person, and of athletics as one part of a life. It is directed to the student athlete, just as it would be in an introductory lecture.

Total Person Education: As a student athlete you can benefit greatly by learning the principles of Total Person Education: mental toughness, emotional awareness, physical focus and spiritual resolve. These character traits allow you to set goals, work hard, and focus on the portion of your performance you can control, and then embrace the results. When this happens, you'll be able to identify the risks, handle the pressure, and focus on the intrinsic value of your individual experience. In other words, you will learn to be inner-directed: to be fully present for all your experiences, to embrace the inherent challenges while having fun, and to get value from your efforts as a student athlete, and elsewhere as well.

Inner-directed: To be inner-directed is to be in charge of your attitudes, feelings and decisions. This power is what psychologists call "ego strength": the ability to step back and respond to your situation with clarity and awareness, and take the action that is consistent with what you desire.

The goal is to express all of the positive energy you have for playing your game. Imagine that you have just completed a practice or a game, you have learned to give your best effort, you are "buzzing", you're feeling the chemical response that goes with working hard at what you love to do.

When you succumb to pressure, you give your power away and you are in danger of reacting with confusion: The decisions you make will sabotage your chances for success. The real risk is that the pressure will be internalized and your self-worth will be linked to your performance. When this happens, you react to external pressures, lose your focus, and become outer-directed. Caution: To be outer-directed is to lose the real value of your efforts: the ability to work hard, and learn the lessons, and complete your education. To complete your education you need to take responsibility for your actions, effectively deal with the void that may exist between your athletic goals and your reality… and graduate. The purpose of your education is to build a bridge into the next phase of your life. Key to the development of this bridge is the good feelings you have for your ability to achieve a series of worthwhile goals along with a college degree.

Be Present: To be present is to focus on the task at hand, to operate in PTC, present time consciousness.
To accomplish this you should learn how to breathe, quiet the mind, and relax the body, to be able to see and feel at the same time, to see what should be done and simultaneously experience the feelings of what should to be done; then, seeing and feeling become one. When you are present, you are open to your feelings, intuitions and insights, the real sources of your intelligence. To be present under pressure, you must practice under pressure and make operating in the present a part of your life.

The goal is to be extremely relaxed, calm and confident. Imagine that you are participating in your favorite activity, you can now see the action and feel the skills you want to perform, you feel strong and confident, the muscles of your face are totally relaxed, you have soft eyes, as you are able to perform flawlessly in the moment.

To be distracted is either having thoughts and feelings about what just happened that persist or to have emotions and expectations for the future that do not belong to the present. The risk is that this distraction will cause you to perform poorly, be embarrassed, and suffer an injury. Emotions that do not belong to the present interfere with the development of your skills and the trust you need to perform these skills under pressure. As an athlete, when you are not present you are a liability - the receiver in football that misses a perfectly thrown pass because he took his eye off the ball. Whether the receiver was afraid of being hit or excited about making a big play, the result is the same: His performance and the performance of the team suffers.

Embrace Challenges: To embrace the challenges in your situation, is to do the work, improve your skills, be intense, and stay positive.
To accomplish this you should maintain a positive attitude as you push up against your limits of fatigue, pain and fear. To increase your mental toughness, to build the confidence and trust, you should be able to relax under pressure and give maximum effort. Central to this process is the ability to reframe negative thoughts into positive thoughts and embrace the challenge. Reframing involves: clarity about the positive aspects of your issue, awareness of feelings, a decision about action needed, establishing a focus, completing the reframe, and feeling good about it.

The goal is to harness all your intensity, and capture the feelings needed to perform at your best. Imagine that you are pushing the limits of your mental, physical and spiritual energy, you feel the pain, a negative thought creeps into your mind you "dig deep", the strength, endurance, and intensity you need is there, you reframe the thought and, you match up with the challenge.

When you do not learn to embrace challenges and be mentally tough, you are at risk of becoming infected with negative thoughts. Negative thoughts create negative feelings of boredom, frustration, pain, anger, and fear. These feelings destroy your performance and relationships … and they are hard on your body. Negative thoughts that persist can cause you to be toxic. At this level, you blame the system and become the victim. As the victim, by definition, you are locked into a negative cycle of thoughts, feelings and actions that create more of the same. In the process, you destroy your own performance and the performance of the team.

Have fun and find value: To have fun and find value in your situation is to be present, embrace the challenges, and complete the experience.
To complete the experience you should debrief, examine the performance-related sensations after every practice and game. The positive actions should be replayed in living color. The feelings associated with these actions form the basis of unconscious competence: skills that you repeat without thinking. The negative feelings should be treated with care and then released. Negative emotions are linked to a lack of focus. To get better, record the learning but not the emotion. A debrief involves reframing any negative thoughts and replaying the negative actions in the mind with the proper focus. The best way to debrief is to keep a journal. A written record requires discipline and discipline is consistent with your desire to get better and have fun.

The goal is to give your best effort and debrief the results. Imagine that you have just completed the biggest game of your life, immediately after the game you ask yourself the right questions, you give an honest appraisal of how well you performed, how you feel about your game, and, how committed you are to getting better.

Failure to debrief is a wasted opportunity to get better, to let go your emotional baggage, to enjoy competition, and find value. When you do not learn to complete and debrief your experience, you are at risk of missing out on the opportunity to learn the lessons you need to get better and actualize all of your potential. As the saying goes, "potential is just a nice way of describing something that hasn't happened yet." Unfortunately, if you fit into this category you will not get to experience the satisfaction that comes with learning how to relax and give your maximum effort.

Keep it Simple: Student athletes are at risk because they are missing an essential part of their education. The good news is that Total Person Education works. Student athletes can be taught to handle the pressure, to operate in the present and hold on to the power, embrace the challenges and be a positive force, and have fun and learn from the experience. When this happens for an individual, dramatic improvement in his or her performance can be expected. When this happens for a team, dramatic transformations can be expected. The irony is that when individuals and teams focus on the process of performing rather than winning, they perform better, are more competitive, and wins replace the losses. The best news is that student athletes that are inner-directed become better people.

The Case of Rolo

At the start of the season, Nick Rolovich is the back-up quarterback for the University of Hawaii football team. For the first three games, he sits and watches the action.

Rolo is inner-directed: In spite of an intense desire to play and what he calls "moments" (times when his desire turned to frustration), Rolo is "into it", he has a positive attitude toward being on the team. He practices hard, he understands the offense, he is in great shape, his skills sharp, and he is ready to play. When the starter, Timmy Chang, breaks his hand, Rolo steps in.

Rolo is present: Starting the fourth game he is relaxed and ready, a little rusty, but ready. Down by 17 points at half-time, he responds to the pressure, rallies the team, and, throws a touchdown pass in overtime to win the game.

Rolo embraces the challenge: His desire to win is contagious. Diving for a lost ball, running over a tackler for a key first down, his aggressive play sparks the team, and he became the emotional leader. At the same time, he learns to manage his own intensity and take charge of an extremely complex offense. Blessed with a rifle for an arm, he learns to make the reads, be patient, throw in rhythm, and, make the big plays, over and over again.

Rolo has fun: He responds to his coaches, he leads the team, he embraces the pressure and he performs beyond what could have been predicted. In the last three games of the season, against Miami of Ohio, Air Force and BYU, he throws for more than 1500 hundred yards and 20 touchdown passes with only two interceptions. In short, Rolo mastered the offense and learned to perform at his best.

Rolo is transformed: He becomes a new person, his personality emerges, his leadership takes form. He travels to the Island of Maui to play in the Hula Bowl. His coaches are impressed, the players on his team respond to him, he leads his team to victory and, wins the MVP Award. His coach, Steve Spurrier, predicts greatness "Rolo will play next year on Sunday." In six months time, Rolo has gone from being a back-up quarterback to a big time player with a legitimate shot at playing professional football. He was given the opportunity to shine, he went inside, found the courage to stay present, be up for the challenge while having fun and, became a star. In the words of his position coach, Dan Morrison, "Rolo's ability to emerge was absolutely amazing." Morrison pauses to reflect on Rolo's accomplishments and his feelings for this great player. "His performance over the last nine games put him in 'rarefied air', he set a new standard for quarterback efficiency and effectiveness, his openness to learn … his drive to get better, and, his humility and love for the game made him a joy to coach."

Rolo is grateful: "Riding the bench was hard," he says, revealing his competitive nature. "I've always been a starter, in high school and junior college." He is quick to source his coach: "I relied on Coach Morrison's composure and direction to keep me in the game. I wanted more than anything to show what I could do and when the opportunity came, I jumped on it." He acknowledges that his ultimate success depended on others: "My higher power was looking out for me, the team was hungry to win, I was in the right system, and I had the support I needed to play well, I am forever grateful to my coaches, my teammates, the UH fans and the State of Hawaii, I plan to return in the off season to complete my education, give back to the UH, and contribute to the aloha spirit."