I'm 19 years old, and have been playing hockey for most of my life. My parents want me to take it professionally, but I feel no passion for it. What should I do?

I wonder why do you still continue to play hockey even though you do not have passion. I think you might still have passion for it, otherwise you would not be in this field for so long.

You might have been too involve with it for too long and got bored with it. Like all long relationship, the fire might slowly die off.

Try asking yourself why you play hockey in the first place.. Take a short break, visit other countries playing hockey. Meet more people in and outside of the hockey world.

You might just find the spark again to keep the fire going.

There is no point in playing professionally if you have no passion for it. You should let them know that they should not push you to do something you don't like.

in Life we often meet With situations where we are forced to do what we dislike. If you are truely good at it and can milk something good out of it then maybe it might be wise to stick to it for a while and achieve something before moving in to your passion.

if you found out that you are not as good in the area of your passion then would you have regretted that you did not stick to what you are good at ?

1. Try to rationalise what you're feeling right now, where your lack of passion stems from; is it burn out? or do you truly don't enjoy playing the sport?

2. Also rationalise whether you want to take the sport professionally. Having passion for a sport doesn't necessarily mean that you want to develop it into a career for various reasons (e.g. you may think that it's not a healthy career because it's not easy to sustain it once you go beyond the peak).

3. Commnicate to your parents about Points 1 and 2. And also understand why they want you to take it professionally (other than that they've invested large amount of money in you for it). Also take this opportunity to let them know what you would like to do next (or let them know that you want to find something you would like to commit to, if you haven't figure this out).

Communication is important, if not the key thing here. Make your voice heard but also remember that they may not necessarily agree with you. But even if they don't agree with you (yet), don't think that you're being ungrateful to want to move away from it. This is your future that we are talking about here.

Putting it from another perspective - if you continue with hockey out of "gratefulness" to your parents but because of the lack of passion and interest in the sport anymore, you fail to perform to their expectation (and in this case, the coach's and other investors' expectations). In the worst case scenario, you may not even be able to stay on the team or any professional team, killing your own career too. At that point of time, what are you go to do?