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Thursday, March 6, 2008 The Bowling Microcosm If the universe of league bowlers in the U.S. represented the population of the earth, then, since 1979, every last person living in the world's 20 largest countries - 4.4 billion to be exact - would have been completely wiped out.   China, India, the United States, Russia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines and 12 other citadels of civilization, once teeming with activity and life, would have been reduced to completely barren wastelands and vast ranges of open space.   The towering and prosperous cities of the world, the wholesome breadbaskets of agriculture and the glorious monuments of our technological and social progress, would lay abandoned, collecting dust, plunging our world into darkness and decay.   The impact of this tragedy on the great interwoven fabric of the world would certainly cause enormous suffering to the remaining 30 percent as well, depriving these people of food, technological innovations, and other essential resources upon which the rest of the world depends.  Not to mention the terrifying knowledge that every man, woman and child, every great leader and head of state, every loving family, every accomplished schoolteacher, every acclaimed entertainer and every prodigiously intelligent student within this population could not stop it.   What would the survivors of this cataclysm do to rebuild the community of our planet and reactivate the latent resources laying fallow in the great expanses of empty, abandoned space?  They would repopulate.  They would pioneer expeditions to these former lands and re-cultivate them.  They would explore the technology left behind and utilize the soaring intellect of their brains to duplicate past successes and invent new innovations to build their civilization back to its former glory...and eventually supersede it.  This is the core of human nature.  To progress.  To build.  To expand.   But in order to do this, the people would need the vision, the confidence and the work ethic required to venture outside of their shrinking, confining boxes and break the spiraling cycle of failure and despair in which they are caught.  They would need courage and cleverness and an iron will.  They would need to forget their fears and their suspicions, their greed and their short-term needs and desires in order to forge a new destiny for the greater good of humanity.    Is there any doubt that this is not what would occur if this destiny were to befall our earth?  Then why does it have to be different for the sport of bowling?  The sport of bowling is a microcosm of our planet, beset with the same problems of injustice, resentment, political self-interest, greed and lack of foresight, but also filled with bright minds, energetic leaders and passionate denizens, all woven and locked together in a complex ecosystem that will survive or perish as one unit.  The good news for us is that the raw materials we need for rebuilding the sport are all around us...recreational bowlers, bowling awareness, and the pop-culture mind-space status that bowling still enjoys today.  But most importantly, we have our love and our knowledge of bowling and a desire to pass on the warmth and happiness it brings us, to others.    It is eminently possible for the sport of bowling and every entity that shares in and is inextricably woven into the fabric of the industry to be regenerated and to recapture and surpass the glory of the bowling microcosm that exists as a small but important piece of our global community.  Working together and using our immense collective intelligence is not enough however.  We must remember that in order to repopulate, we must expand our horizons by spreading the message and the love of what we are doing to new people and new places...to markets that are not yet aware of our existence or simply don't consider us to be important.  It is our job to make them aware and to make our message important enough to fill them with an unquenchable desire to be a part of what we're doing.    If we can do that, then the sport of bowling can provide us all with the abundance and joy that we all hoped to achieve when we first cast our lot in with it.  Let's do our part to make this happen now!  I, for one, am willing to do whatever it takes.    2:00 pm est

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LIVIN' THE DREAM:

How to get what you want, find true meaning and save the world by bowling!

 

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

Q: What is the book about?

A: The book is about how the valuable lessons I learned through my lifelong involvement in bowling saved my life and transformed me from an unhappy cynic into a blissfully happy optimist. 

Q: What made you decide to write it?

A: I had been out of the bowling industry for about two years and I had hit a very low point in my attitude about life. Through the help of a family member, I was able to rediscover the important lessons about success, spirituality and connecting with others. I was so excited about this transformation that I decided to write a book that attempts to detail the metamorphosis while outlining the important lessons I remembered.

Q: How is this book different from other self-help books?

A: The book is different in a number of ways. First, I am a very unlikely person to have written a self-help book. If you had known me before I'd written the book, you'd know precisely what I mean. But that fact alone reveals how strongly I felt about writing it, because I knew that if I could change for the better, then I felt anyone could do it and that there was a good chance that I could help a lot of people by describing the process and arranging the pieces in a way that could be easily understood.

The other key point of difference is the way the book is arranged. The story is structured into three parts, The Method, Some Cool Tricks and For the Hard-Core Cynics, each of which contain the important lessons I wanted to share. Every chapter is also broken up with a narrative of my personal story, told for the purpose of detailing my amazing attitude transformation. It begins with the extremely low point when others felt the need to reach out to help me to remember the important things in life and goes on to detail the many people that helped me to learn the most important life lessons, including: my childhood friend Robert Smith, my father (a former President of Disneyland International), PBA Chairman Chris Peters and former PBA CEO Steve Miller.  

Q: Is the book as funny as your blogs?

A: Yes! But there is also a serious side too.

Q: How is your book different from something like The Secret?

A: My book is similar to The Secret in that it proposes a method for success, but it is different in a number of ways. First, it is a bit more practical when it comes to outlining the method for achieving success. The Secret comes very close to describing a similar method for success in its "Ask, Believe, Receive" mantra. In my book, the first two of these elements ("Ask" and "Believe") are integral (although I call them "Dream" and "Self-Belief"), but I believe there has to be some proactive work done to achieve the goal. I call it hard work (which turns a lot of people off, of course) but to use the model of The Secret, you would simply replace the word "Receive" with "Retrieve." The best part of all this (and the good news for the folks who don't want to have to work hard) is that once you decide on what you want and then you begin to believe you can get it, the work is no longer hard, but becomes a fun activity that fills your days with joy and purpose.

Second, my book spends a significant amount of time discussing how to deal with your success once you've attained it (and that conducting yourself in this manner before you reach your goals will actually help you get there even faster). Probably the best way to describe my book is that it's a cross between The Secret and the late Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture. But I also quote a number of more research-driven books like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate to help me make my point.

Q: Do you have to be a bowler to like this book?

A: Absolutely not! Bowling obviously plays a major role (although it really serves more as the setting rather than as the primary focal point) because of my involvement with the sport my whole life. But the lessons bowling taught me are lessons I could have learned if I had chosen to be a golfer or a doctor or a writer (oops, I guess that one's a bad example now). My hope is that the book will find its way into the hands of people who don't bowl and that these people will come away with a new appreciation for bowlers and the sport of bowling.

Q: What is your goal with the book?

A: That is a simple one. To help as many people as possible to experience the gift of embracing an optimistic way of life and to help them reap its many rewards.