This study explored the essence of Swedish elite athletes’ experiences of their Quality of Life (QOL). A total of eight individual elite sport athletes (3 men and 5 women; mean age 25.5 years, range: 20-32 years) were interviewed twice. By use of interpretative phenomenological analysis, results showed the essence of QOL to consist of a superordinate category of an inner strive to move forward in the athletic development. Lower order categories of QOL consisted of a perceived gratitude to the opportunity to invest in the sport, value-driven behaviours, where goals and efforts were linked to the athletes’ inner values, combined with a perceived relief from various impeding life- or sport related stressors. The importance for future research and applied sport psychology practice to consider the holistic subjective experiences, including individual and social resources, values and goals as well as impeding factors for health and QOL is discussed.