Reflecting on the Inside: The Pathway to Personal Growth

Self reflection is one of those things everybody says is important, but it doesn't accomplish much if all we're doing is sitting around thinking about ourselves. Real self reflection requires enough honesty to look at our habits, motives, reactions, priorities, and choices without immediately defending everything we find. Athletes spend hours watching film because you can't fix what you're unwilling to see, and I think we should be willing to turn that same camera on ourselves.

That's where self reflection can get uncomfortable because most of us are pretty good at evaluating everybody except ourselves. We know when our coach communicated poorly, when our teammate had a bad attitude, when an official screwed up, when our parents put too much pressure on us, and when somebody else didn't do their job. We're a whole lot slower to ask whether we were coachable, selfish, lazy, jealous, disrespectful, unprepared, or part of the problem.

If every difficult situation in your life is always somebody else's fault, you probably aren't reflecting very hard.

For Christian athletes, self reflection has to go deeper than asking whether we're reaching our goals or becoming better athletes. We need to examine whether the person we're becoming actually looks anything like the person we claim to be following. It's possible to improve your vertical, get stronger, earn better grades, become a starter, and build an impressive athletic career while your character is going completely backward.

That's why Romans 12:2 needs to be handled correctly. Romans 12:2 (ESV) says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Paul isn't giving us a self improvement strategy or saying that analyzing ourselves deeply enough will reveal God's individual plan for our athletic careers. He's calling believers to a transformed way of thinking that comes from belonging to Christ rather than allowing the patterns and values of the world to shape us.

That should create some serious conviction for athletes because the sports world will gladly tell you what should matter most. Be better than everybody else. Get attention. Build your brand. Chase the offer. Chase the ranking. Chase the starting position. Make sure everybody sees what you're accomplishing, and if somebody else gets what you wanted, figure out why you deserved it more.

Romans 12 challenges us to stop letting the world decide what success is supposed to look like.

That doesn't mean Christian athletes shouldn't chase excellence because I want athletes who are competitive as hell and willing to work for something difficult. Train hard, pursue the scholarship, fight for the starting position, and want the ball when the match is on the line, but learn how to examine what all of that is doing inside of you. Are you becoming more disciplined or just more obsessed? Are you becoming more confident or more arrogant? Are you learning how to compete or learning how to hate anybody who threatens your position? Are you pursuing excellence, or have you quietly built your entire identity around being successful?

Those are self reflection questions worth asking.

Prayer and Scripture absolutely belong in that process, but we shouldn't turn them into another athlete checklist. Reading your Bible, journaling, and praying aren't magic habits that automatically make you spiritually mature. You can read Scripture every morning and spend the rest of the day refusing to obey anything that challenges you. You can journal about humility while treating your teammates like garbage, and you can pray before every match while making your entire identity about what happens after the first whistle.

James 1:22 (ESV) says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” That's where reflection has to lead somewhere because recognizing a problem and refusing to do anything about it isn't growth. If you realize you're constantly making excuses, work on taking accountability. If you recognize jealousy toward a teammate, deal with it instead of feeding it. If your attitude changes every time your playing time changes, stop pretending the problem is always your coach.

Awareness without action can become another excuse.

Good self reflection also requires other people because we're not always reliable evaluators of ourselves. Sometimes we need a coach, teammate, parent, pastor, mentor, counselor, or trusted friend who cares enough to tell us something we don't want to hear. Proverbs 27:17 (ESV) says, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” That verse isn't specifically about accountability partners or athletic teammates, but the principle of people strengthening and sharpening one another fits here pretty naturally.

The key is finding people who will tell you the truth instead of constantly telling you you're right. If everybody in your circle agrees that every coach is unfair, every teammate is jealous, every professor is unreasonable, and every setback happened because somebody screwed you over, you don't have accountability. You have an echo chamber.

Athletes also need to pay attention to their emotional and mental well being, but self reflection isn't a substitute for professional mental health care. It can help you notice patterns, recognize stressors, identify when something feels different, and become more aware of how you're responding to pressure. What it can't do is diagnose or treat every mental health concern, and there's nothing tough about ignoring a serious problem because you think athletes are supposed to handle everything themselves.

Sports will expose emotional patterns pretty quickly anyway. Pay attention to what happens inside you after you make a mistake. Do you recover or spend the next five points beating yourself up? What happens when your coach corrects you? Do you listen or immediately become defensive? What happens when a teammate succeeds in the role you wanted? Can you genuinely celebrate them, or does jealousy start eating you alive?

Those reactions are giving you information about yourself, and you shouldn't waste it.

Self reflection should also make us look at the gap between what we say matters and what our habits say matters. If you say academics are important but constantly procrastinate until you're in trouble, there's a gap. If you say your teammates matter but become miserable every time somebody else succeeds, there's a gap. If you say you want to play at the next level but consistently avoid the work required to get there, there's a gap. If you say Christ is the center of your life but He gets whatever scraps of attention remain after sports, school, friends, and your phone, there's a gap.

Quit judging yourself by your intentions and start looking at your patterns.

2 Corinthians 13:5 (ESV) says, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.” Paul is addressing the Corinthians in a specific situation and challenging them to examine whether they genuinely belong to Christ, so this verse shouldn't be reduced to a generic motivational command to evaluate athletic performance. The principle is still uncomfortable because Scripture clearly doesn't treat honest self examination as optional.

Christian self reflection isn't about staring at yourself until you become consumed with every weakness and failure. It's about bringing yourself honestly before God, allowing Scripture to expose what needs to change, confessing sin instead of renaming it, receiving grace instead of hiding, and then actually responding in obedience.

That's where repentance matters because Christian growth isn't just recognizing, “I probably shouldn't do that anymore.” Repentance involves turning away from sin and turning toward God. If reflection keeps revealing the same behavior but you have absolutely no intention of changing it, you're not doing the hard work of growth. You're just becoming more educated about your own excuses.

So watch your own film once in a while, and don't limit it to volleyball. Look at how you respond when you're angry, disappointed, corrected, overlooked, tired, jealous, or embarrassed. Pay attention to what happens when nobody is watching and when doing the right thing gets you absolutely nothing in return. Ask people you trust where they see weaknesses you might be missing, then have enough humility to listen without immediately explaining yourself.

You don't need to obsess over yourself, and you definitely don't need to beat yourself up every time you find something that needs work. You need enough honesty to see what's there, enough humility to admit it, enough faith to bring it to God, and enough discipline to actually do something about it.

Athletes understand that watching film is useless if you keep seeing the same mistake and refuse to make the correction. Your life isn't any different. If you keep identifying the same excuses, the same pride, the same jealousy, the same bad habits, and the same gaps between what you say and how you live, eventually you have to stop calling it self reflection and start asking why you still haven't changed.