Why Does Losing Make Me Feel Worthless?

Join Olympic sprinter and Christian mentor Ronnie Baker in this devotional as he delves into the importance of anchoring your identity in Christ rather than in your athletic performance. Ronnie explores how subconscious beliefs can influence your actions and results, and shares his personal journey of battling self-doubt after the 2021 Olympics. He emphasizes the significance of renewing your mind through scriptural truths and offers a practical challenge to identify and replace lies with God's Word. This episode aims to help athletes compete from a place of wholeness and faith, reminding them that their worth is determined by Christ's sacrifice, not their achievements.

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Transcript

Ronnie Baker 0:00

If you never won another race, if you didn't have your sport, would you even know who you are? What's up y'all? I'm Ronnie Baker, your favorite Olympic sprinter and Christian mentor discipling you on how to navigate your faith in your sport. In today's devotional, we are going to tackle what it means to have your identity in Christ. We're actually gonna get down to the root of it. Okay? So that's a real question, and if it shook you a little, you're not alone. A lot of athletes don't know who they are without the stopwatch, the scoreboard, or the social media clout. Why is that? Because over time, whether we know it or not, we start to equate our worth with our wins. And that's not a mindset issue, it's actually a subconscious programming problem. So if you guys are in the school, if you've taken any psychology courses, you know about the subconscious and we're gonna talk about that today. So let me break it down for you. The subconscious is like a default operating system. The subconscious stores more of what you feel and less of what you heard at a conscious level.

0:59

So the subconscious literally stands for before consciousness, which means there may be thoughts in your head and beliefs in your head that you're not even aware of. The way that you get to your results in life is that you have a belief. That belief turns into a thought. That thought turns into a feeling. That feeling makes you take action and then you get a certain result, whether that's good or bad. Now, if you have negative beliefs about who you are in Christ, then you're probably gonna get negative results. But here's the thing with the subconscious is that. Once that belief is implanted into your subconscious, you actually don't even have full awareness or consciousness of your thoughts and your feelings, and you just skip right to an action. For instance, I'll give you a personal example. After the Olympics in 2021, I kept trying to go back and figure out how I could have won that race. So the belief that I started to have and produce in myself, in my subconscious was that I'm not good enough. I've trained hard for six years. I still haven't won a medal, therefore, I'm not good enough. Or another belief that I started to have was that I needed to do more. There was something I wasn't doing. I was missing something, And because that started to create a belief in my subconscious, I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was running an autopilot now. So whenever I'd have a negative thought like that, Hey, I'm not good enough. I would always result to taking action. that would make that belief true. And then my results would be poor races. My results would be not running how I knew I could. And for three years I didn't run like I knew I could because I had this belief that I wasn't good enough. So every time I would go to a race, guess what my body was making sure. That belief became real, that belief was true. Your body is always gonna work in a way to validate your belief. So what you need to do is you need to attack the root attack that lie and reroute your identity back in Christ. And that's what we're gonna do today. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna rewire these beliefs so that our beliefs are rooted in Christ and that we can get better results not only in our life, but also in our sport.

Ronnie Baker 3:07

for example, since middle school, you've been celebrated, when you perform well and you've been ignored, when you fail, your subconscious starts to write a script. This happened for me when I was in school and I was in sports when I didn't do well. Maybe my dad got on me a little bit more, or he told me I should have scored 30 or 35 points instead of the 15 that I scored. Or if I did perform well, I would get praise for it. And I think even at the pro level, for me, we're our own worst critics, If I would perform sometimes and I would run really fast, but I would lose, I would say to myself that I had a bad performance. So now I'm reiterating this negative feeling with the conscious thought of a bad performance, Or I would say things like, I matter when I win. Or I'm invisible when I lose. This happens to us all the time. It happens to me and a lot of other athletes as well, I believe, because whenever you're winning, especially in track and field, you're on the front page. Everyone talks about you. When you lose, when you start to fall back, when you start to not win races anymore, you disappear and you base your worth on what the world believes about you. What you don't even realize is that these thoughts and these emotions are being embedded into your subconscious and those emotions They drive everything that you do and that you believe. So that fear before a big race, that's a product of that, that depression after a loss. It's a product of those thoughts It's not just pressure. It's an identity that's been hijacked by performance. But the gospel is not about behavior modification. It's about identity transformation. Galatians two 20 says, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave him himself for me. That means you are not your result. You're not your PR and you're not your position on the team. You're a child of God, period. And when you receive Christ, your identity shifts. But here's the key. You have to rewire your subconscious with that truth if you don't believe it. It won't be true for you, even though it's a true statement. Psychology calls this rewiring neuroplasticity. Romans 12, two calls it renewing of your mind. It's the same principle, but it comes from a different source, an internal source. For me, I had to realize no matter how fast I ran, I was never fast enough to outrun the lie that I needed to earn my worth and For me in 2021, I was trying to earn my worth. Guys, when I got to the Olympics, I felt like I should have won because of all the things I did leading up to that moment, read my Bible, pray, flee from sin. I felt like I had earned this win by doing all these things I quote unquote did for God in order to earn this medal. But when I finally sat down and I gave my identity back to God, I felt free for the first time, really in a long time. Really in my entire life, not because I had won something, I got fifth in that race, but because I realized I didn't have to anymore. So today we're gonna rewire the script. This is your challenge. Step one is awareness. We're gonna write down three lies that you've believed about yourself that are tied to your performance. Some examples are, if I lose, I'm not good enough, or God isn't hearing my prayers if I lose. Those are two examples. Step two is a truth replacement. Now you're gonna write three truths from scripture that counter these lies. Some examples. I am God's masterpiece comes from Ephesians two 10. I'm fully known and fully loved, Now, step three is you're gonna speak these daily for the next seven days. Say those three truths out loud every morning before practice. You are literally renewing your mind because you're retraining your subconscious to live by faith, not fear. And your subconscious is where all the deep rooted lies live. And the enemy's plan is to get you to believe those lies. Okay? Let me pray for you. God, I've let my sport define who I am, but I want you to rewire that. I want you to show me who I really am, not just in my head, but in my heart and my habits. Help me to compete from a place of wholeness, not fear. I give you my identity and I receive the truth. Amen. Just remember that your worth was settled at the cross and not the finish line. If this helps you, make sure you share it with another athlete. Always remember that defeat is optional when you have him. I love you guys and I will catch you in the next one.