You can see the end of your playing career quickly approaching — or perhaps you have already gotten there — and you’ve hit the wall, wondering what’s next in your life after sports. You’re sitting on the couch or staring at your computer or phone screen, and you truly don’t know what to do next — what websites you should be looking at or even where you’re going to get the motivation to move on from where you are now. You know you’re not the first going through this, but how does everyone else get hired for a job where they truly feel fulfilled after they retire?

As an athlete, whether collegiate, Olympian, Paralympian or professional, you have carved out a playing career that has encompassed several “jobs,” which, in your case, involved being on a variety of teams beginning with your childhood, through elementary, middle and high school and kicking it up several notches in college and beyond. Each one of these teams has effectively been a job that you have excelled at, allowing yourself to be promoted continuously, landing yourself in new and better jobs throughout the course of your athletic career.

Now it is time to begin a new career, which will likely include several jobs over the rest of your working life, all of which should give you a very high level of satisfaction and success, just like your experience with your athletic career. But how do you break into this new career if you feel like you haven’t yet developed the experience or expertise you believe is required?

If you are feeling those doubts, you are not alone.

Most retired athletes I have worked with have been at a loss to figure out what to do next. You have been practicing and playing a sport your whole life, focusing nearly every moment on becoming the best athlete you can be, and you likely fear that you are starting many steps behind your non-athlete competition.

The good news for you is that you are, at the very least, even with them — and likely even ahead of them — in the race for your next ideal job. All you need to do is become more aware of those skills and abilities that you have become proficient at that — and your competition probably lacks.

Below are just a few of the qualities that you have developed that will put you ahead of others pursuing similar jobs in the career you want to be in.

1. You have proven your dedication as an “employee.”