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Friday, September 12, 2008 Somehwere In Between Is The Truth George Carlin once said that somewhere between New Hampshire’s state license plate motto (which is “Live Free or Die!”) and Idaho’s (which is “Famous Potatoes”) there is the truth.  And as hubbub from the hyper-partisan Democratic and Republican national conventions begins to unwind, this idea becomes magnified and, like most things, it makes me think about the state of the bowling industry (yep, with me everything comes back to bowling…my poor wife!). Is bowling dying?  Is it thriving?  At Bowl Expo in June, I heard folks say both with equal passion and equal certainty.  To be sure, there are many problems in the bowling industry…the slow erosion of league bowling membership, pricing issues in the consumer products market, stiff competition from other forms of entertainment and real estate developers.  But just as surely, there are success stories as well…a surge in recreational participation, the expansion of Lucky Strike Lanes and the bowling lounge format in general, and a strong presence in pop culture. Is it possible that the truth lies somewhere in between?  Could all of these things be true simultaneously?  I think the problem with us “industry folks” is that we’re always grasping for an easy one-sentence description of the state of things so we know where we stand by comparison as individuals.  Are we doing better than the rest?  Worse?  Surely there are a good number of people who are getting richer doing business in the bowling industry.  And clearly there are others who are getting poorer.  What’s the difference between the two? I would argue that the main difference is the way the successful view the world in comparison to those who struggle.  The successful have a strong vision of what it is they want to accomplish, believe fully in their ability to accomplish it and do whatever hard work is necessary to make it happen.  Over time, success comes to these individuals as much by way of their will and desire as through a recognition by others that these people represent the best in their field.  The future of the bowling industry will be determined by the ability of these successful individuals to inspire others to implement these methods in pursuit of their own specific goals.  If there is one thing that American history has taught us it is that no matter what our differences, if we work toward a common dream, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish, except maybe lofting the ball over the left gutter cap like Robert Smith and still getting it to hit like a freight train.  12:47 pm edt  Monday, September 8, 2008 Livin' the Dream - Week 1 As the Joker says to the wealthy attendees of Bruce Wayne's benefit for Harvey Dent in the latest Batman film The Dark Knight, "Good evening ladies and gentlemen...we are tonight's entertainment." So I say to you...except I'm not here to rob you or to find out your true identities or to create mass hysteria. Instead, I'm here to help you and share with you mine. Some of you may remember me as the host of Let's Go Bowling, which was an attempted comedy show I did on this site for six episodes back in 2007. Others may have seen The Bowling Show starring P.B. Atkinson, which I launched on my own web site earlier this year and will now be a monthly show over on BowlersParadise.com starting September 9. Still others of you may be wondering, "Hey Marge, who the "bleep" is this guy?" Well, to keep it as simple as possible, I'm a bowler just like you. I spent my childhood and teen years getting my butt kicked by Robert Smith in the junior bowling program of Southern California. I qualified to bowl in the U.S. Open at age 18, where I got my butt kicked by Walter Ray and Del Ballard and about 200 other-odd pros (but did manage to beat about 200 others). I gave up on pro bowling when I graduated college and realized that it would take me about 10 years of grinding on Tour before I could even expect to have a chance to earn as much as I could as an entry-level marketing professional (but hey, at least I didn't get my butt kicked by anyone!). I got back into bowling when Chris Peters offered me a job at the PBA...where Steve Miller soon started kicking my butt. I left the PBA in 2004 and got my butt kicked by the real world. And then I realized that getting my butt kicked in bowling was what I loved more than anything so now here I am back involved with bowling again. As you can tell, my relationship with bowling, like any relationship that you are truly passionate about, has always been love/hate. If you're a bowler like me, you know that there are so many things to love about bowling - the satisfaction of rolling a perfect game, the thrill of beating a tough opponent, the smell of lane oil (OK, maybe I'm alone in that one). There are also so many things to hate - the lack of respect from society, the lack of money at the professional level, the declines in competitive participation, Barack Obama's bowling form. But the reason I'm still here fighting to change those things is because I was able to find a way to focus on those things I love about bowling and to use them to accept for now, but eventually change, the things I don't like about it. Starting this week, I invite you to join me each week to share my thoughts on bowling. I'll share my opinions on the professional game, tips and instruction, inside info on the names and faces of the sport, political views, pop-culture references and just about anything else you can think of that has to do with bowling. I highly encourage and value your feedback and your comments and would always like to know if there is anything I can do to help you with your involvement in the sport of bowling. So with that said, please enjoy The Bowling Show on bowlersparadise.com, be sure to check out my new book Livin' The Dream: How to Get What You Want, Find True Meaning and Save the World by Bowling! and check back next week for my latest bowling rant. 12:55 pm edt

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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.