This paper suggests that collegiate and professional athletes preparing to retire should be provided with preretirement and postretirement rehabilitation counseling. The counseling should involve a preventative approach centered around self-acceptance, to enhance the athlete's performance before and after retirement. The development of self-acceptance in an athlete helps him or her to experience less competitive cognitive anxiety. A model for performance enhancement links self-acceptance to cognitive anxiety and cognitive anxiety to performance. Questions are presented that athletes can ask themselves to examine their level of self-acceptance and that coaches can ask themselves to determine their enhancement of athletes' self-acceptance. The issue of retirement for professional athletes is compared to the psychological stages of someone who is dying. These stages include denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Counseling an athlete as he or she goes through these stages involves listening/confrontation, cognitive therapy, and vocational guidance. Counselors are encouraged to provide empathy and support, break the problem into manageable parts and develop a plan to tackle those parts, and determine the athlete's internal and external strengths and resources. An appendix presents a self-concept diagram. (Contains 12 references.) (JDD)