Some Advice for Facing a Scary and Uncertain Future

As young adults, you face a lot of difficult and scary things—personal issues like decisions about education, career, marriage, and family. And you also face more widespread issues, like economic crises, social temptations, political upheavals, and even war. But from my own life experience, I know that as we choose to put the Lord first in our lives, He is always there to guide us through it all.

The Influence of Good Friends and Good People

I had the good fortune of having good friends when I got home from my mission. A friend I had met in the missionary training center introduced me to the woman who would later become my wife. I’ve never discounted the fact that your friends often determine your success or failure in life. Your friends and mentors can help you make decisions that will lead you either closer to or farther from God.

When I was in the National Football League, I looked up to Gifford Nielsen, who had also played for BYU before going on to the NFL, eventually becoming a sportscaster and later a General Authority Seventy. I ran into him one day on a golf course, and he gave me advice that changed the course of my professional career.

We were sitting in a golf cart, just me and him, and after I told him about my plan to go into television like he had after I finished playing football, he gave me advice to not continue pursuing a career that would require me to be at the games on Sundays. That way, I’d always be able to have a calling on Sundays and serve in the Church.

It was that simple, but it was advice that I hadn’t thought about. And that changed the course of my life.

Standing Up for What You Believe

Most of my career in the NFL was scary and uncertain. Only 2 percent of college football players make it to the NFL, and even when I made the team, I could get cut at any time. To survive as long as I did was a great blessing, but living without a fallback was hard. It took a lot of faith.

In the NFL, you go from team to team, year to year, bouncing around the country. It seems glamorous, but most people don’t see the less glamorous parts. It’s a hard way to live. And it’s a hard way for couples to live too; that’s one reason why there’s such a high divorce rate among professional athletes.

What helped is that I knew where I stood. I had a firm foundation in Christ, and I consistently did all those things that kept me close to Him and Heavenly Father.

You might not face a career path that is filled with so much pressure and temptation, but in my case, being a professional athlete exposed me to a very different lifestyle than I was used to. For example, when we arrived in big cities and traveled in the beginning, my teammates immediately wanted to go out and participate in different activities that were not aligned with gospel standards, and I knew right then that I couldn’t straddle Zion and Babylon. I couldn’t answer “let me think about it” in order to appease them. Instead, I needed to be firm in my faith and explain why I couldn’t join them.