What Do You Do When You Realize Your Career No Longer Aligns with Your Values or Life Goals?
Do you just keep pushing forward? Or do you immediately stop what you’re doing and find a better fit? Former NFL Pro Julius Thomas found himself asking these questions at the age of 26. His answer might surprise you.
Have you ever felt like you had it all yet didn’t really have what you wanted?
Former NFL tight end Julius Thomas can relate.
Despite living the dream as a Pro Bowl football player, “I wasn’t fully happy, and I think that a lot of people can relate to that,” he shared with me and my Chalk Talk co-host Hale Hentges recently.
“I guess I always had this idea that there was a certain job, there was a certain amount of money, there’s a certain type of house, there was a certain type of car that if I had all these things, it would make me happy. And I was actually one of the fortunate and unfortunate people that got all those things. And here I am, 26 years old sitting in the house of stuff of my dreams and going, damn, why am I not happy? I thought this was supposed to feel a certain way. I thought I was gonna work hard my whole life, and I was gonna get to this point, and it was gonna feel fulfilling, and that’s just not the case.”
If that hits close to home, you might be wondering what he did. It couldn’t be easy to walk away from an NFL career, right?! (Maybe you’ve struggled to make the right call in a similar situation in your own career.)
This might sound cliché, but he asked himself:
“Are you gonna follow your heart again?”
The answer was “yes,” and he left the NFL soon after. However, to be clear, this wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction to a moment of heightened pressure. This wasn’t a sudden decision. He had a desire for intellectual growth for years, and his inability to achieve that in his NFL career is what – in part – led him to feel unfulfilled despite his record-setting performance.
“I had two coaches at two separate stops in my career tell me, ‘Hey, Julius, with your ideas and the things you’re suggesting like, ok. But we don’t pay you to think. We pay you to run.’ And I was like, damn. So, the piece that I was always missing as an athlete was to be able to build and grow intellectually, like everything was about neck down.”
At the time, this feedback didn’t sit well with him. But later, it’s what gave him the push he needed to move on to something even better…for him.
Proof That Everything Works Out as It Should
Toward the end of his NFL career, Julius began questioning the implications of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and brain health in football. Although initially advised not to worry about it, his curiosity remained. In fact, it has written the next chapter of his career.
After leaving the NFL, Julius started educating himself more on the impact of (physical) impacts on football players. He participated in the Contact Sports Brain Study, which examined cognitive and emotional health differences between athletes in contact sports and non-contact sports individuals, and the study’s findings on emotional health disparities particularly resonated with him.
This fueled his interest in further research, during which he met Dr. Jamie Carter, a neuroscientist who became a mentor to him. Her influence, and his growing interest in psychology, led him to pursue a doctorate in psychology, with a focus on brain health and player safety.
He then went onto apply that knowledge to improve athlete wellbeing in several roles:
- Founder & CEO of Optimal Performance, a human performance science company that leverages science-based methodologies to bridge the gap between peak performance and personal wellbeing.
- Mental Performance Specialist, San Antonio Spurs, where he applies his expertise to help the team members optimize their mental and emotional performance.
- President of the Society for Sports Neuroscience, an organization for passionate scientists and practitioners with an interest in furthering research-based athletic performance and brain health.
- Psychology Doctoral Intern, Nova Southeastern University (expected 2025), where he provides a combination of clinical psychology and neuropsychological services, as clinically appropriate, in an interdisciplinary inpatient rehab hospital and outpatient brain injury program, working with a wide range of medical patients.
- Director of Mental Wellbeing, Pro Athlete Community, an exclusive network connecting the biggest talent in sports with the best in business.
- Behavioral Health Advisor, NFL Players Association
- Advisory Board Member, Football Players Health Study at Harvard, which contributes to research efforts aimed at understanding and improving the health of former NFL players.
So, if you ever think you’re stuck in your career or you’re questioning whether you’re doing the right thing for you, listen to your heart. The heart knows best.
(It would also be good to listen to our full conversation with Julius. Lots of inspiration here.)
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