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Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Power of Time OffIt seems like an eternity since my last column, but now that the arthritis in my fingers and the fused vertebrae
of my hunched back have healed after assembling 10,000-some-odd pieces of Lego sets my boys received from Santa this Christmas,
it’s nice to be back to real life again. And for me real life means a return to bowling!
Over the break,
I contracted a nasty virus and was out of commission for about a week (I blame my slave-driving sons spurring me on to finish
the 5,250-piece Ultimate Collector’s Edition Millennium Falcon which not only took it’s toll on my health but
probably also consumed a bit of my soul, not to mention about three quarters of our dining room table). The cold prevented
me from doing any bowling over the break and I also had a hard time thinking about, or working on, any of the bowling-related
projects on which I was looking forward to spending time.
So, when my Tuesday night league rolled around I was
fully expecting a tough night. For those of you who don’t remember or haven’t read my earlier columns, I bowl
in a five-person mixed handicap league. Currently, I’m averaging 216 in the league (which is high in the league…not
that I notice…yeah, right!) but I’ve had a very hard time shooting any really high scores. Some other good bowlers
in the league have had much more success in shooting honor scores (there’s been an 804 and a couple of 300’s),
while I’ve plodded along consistently with a high series of 703 and a high game of 267.
To make the likelihood
of bowling well even lower, I showed up late to practice and only got two shots in before the guy at the desk cut off the
lights and said, “Good luck and good bowling.” I heard, “Good luck shooting 520 Mr. No-practice, rusty-armed
sucker!”
After two shaky nine-spares in my first two frames, I made a move right and started hitting the
pocket. After three so-so strikes in a row, I started to get comfortable and ran off a six-bagger before ringing a ten. After
a strike-spare in the tenth, I’d shot a clean 248 and was pleasantly surprised.
In game two I started with
the front eight and felt pretty good about my chances to shoot 300. Of course, the mere thought of 300 jinxed me and I rung
another ten in the ninth frame. A spare-nine count in the tenth gave me 267 (tying my high game of the season…yay!)
and a smooth 515 at the turn. Game three was pretty good also, except I got caught not moving far enough left twice between
strikes (but still left easy spare leaves) and rung another ten in the eleventh for a clean 227. Altogether, it added up to
a tidy little 742 set and some serious consideration for never practicing again.
On a related note, the next day
I solved a problem (well, more like the solution just kind of popped into my head while taking a shower…which seems
to happen a lot to me…maybe I should shower more?) that had prevented me from moving forward on one of the projects
I’d wanted to work on over the holidays. It all made me think of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when
Indy and his dad are trapped in a room and the senior Jones (played by Sean Connery) finds the exit simply by sitting down
in a chair to think (the chair was the lever that released a trap door revealing a stairway) while his son scrambles around
like a chicken with his head cut off to no avail.
I guess it just goes to show that sometimes all we need is a
little break to find the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. With my bowling, I had been working very hard on some
things in practice (a new pitch in my thumbhole and a slight timing change in my pushaway) that hadn’t quite seemed
to gel prior to the holiday break. But when I came back after not practicing, everything just fell into place and I felt like
all of the changes were executed on autopilot.
With my work-related project, the solution now seems like such
a simple, obvious one, but for some reason I wasn’t able to figure it out even when I had worked so hard and spent so
much time trying to put it all together. Perhaps it was the universe’s way of telling me that I needed to take a break
and spend all of that extra time with my family, which I did and am now so thankful for (despite the Lego-induced joint arthritis
and back pain…thank God for Ibuprofen!). I hope you all experienced the same recharging, rejuvenating effects from
your own holiday breaks!
See you next week!
Contact me at: jason@jasonthomasbowling.com
Click here to check out a new interview with Jason Thomas about his book “Livin' The Dream: How to Get What You Want, Find
True Meaning and Save the World by Bowling!” To purchase a copy of the book, click here.
Click here to read “Jason’s TV Recap - Uncensored” on PBA.com.
To check out the latest episode of The Bowling
Show click here.
9:08 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. 
