|
|
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Inaugural Speech and the Bowling IndustryLast Tuesday, I was surprised to find myself in front of the TV for about three hours on the morning of
January 20. Besides Lost, House, the PBA on ESPN, and an occasional LA Lakers game I’m usually not the boob tube type...especially
during the daytime hours (to me, General Hospital+The View+Morning News=Gag me with a spoon!). But that day, I felt it was
my duty as an American to watch the historic inauguration of Barack Obama and to witness the beginning of what I’m sure
we all hope will be a great new chapter in the history of our country and the world. (Whoa, do I sound like a cheesy speechwriter
here or what?)
As is almost always the case with anything I do, I found myself thinking about how our new President’s
Inaugural address applies to bowling (which now makes me more than a little curious to see what bowling-related spin I’ll
put on the retelling of the upcoming birth of my daughter, which’ll be any day now...oh, my poor wife). Shockingly,
I discovered a way that has nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Obama may in fact be one of the worst adult bowlers in history
(he infamously shot 37 for seven frames in Pennsylvania back in March 2008 in case you don’t remember).
While
it is true Obama may be one of the poorer bowlers of the world, he more than makes up for it (although as we bowlers know,
there is nothing sexier than the ability to knock down 10 pins with regularity) with his skill for delivering a speech. His
speech last Monday was absolutely riveting and I was struck by his poise, confidence, honesty, determination and humility
(and the fact that he never seemed to be reading from a teleprompter). But as he invoked images of our struggling country
(“every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms”) I couldn’t help but to think
of how well the comparison (especially the part where he said that our economy is struggling as “a consequence of greed
and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for
a new age.”) so adequately describes the state of our beloved bowling industry.
I was also pleased to see
that the method President Obama prescribes for fixing the country is almost the exact blueprint I wrote about in my book,
which, of course, I learned predominately from my life experiences in bowling and the bowling industry (trust me, I’m
pretty sure the President or his speechwriters have never read my book, but I did maintain in it that there is a certain universal
method for achieving success and it was most certainly echoed in the speech). First, the President establishes a dream or
vision for the future of our country that is better than our past or present situation:
“Today I say to
you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span
of time. But know this, America — they will be met.”
Second, he recognizes the importance of reestablishing
our confidence as a key component in helping us to achieve our goals:
“Less measurable
but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable,
and that the next generation must lower its sights.”
And finally, he tells us that the only way to get there
is through hard work, but that the work isn’t as hard as we think it will be and that we will enjoy it because it is
what we need to do to get where we want to go and that it is our purpose in life to do so:
“What is required
of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves,
our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there
is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”
He also alludes to the fact that there will be people who, either directly or indirectly, will attempt to impede our progress
and issues them a reminder and a warning of the past fate of those individuals:
“Now, there are some who
question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories
are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination
is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.”
Of course, now that the speech is over, it is time
for us to act. The things that aren’t working will have to be stopped and new directions and new ideas must be explored
and set out upon. Difficult decisions need to be made and carried out. Our short-term interests must be set aside in order
to build a better future for the long run. Am I still talking about the United States or am I talking about the bowling industry?
Both.
Over the years, I’ve alternated between a very cynical outlook and a very optimistic outlook. The problem
was always that I lacked a method I could follow by which my optimism could flourish and grow...and when I lacked that method,
my outlook would lapse into cynicism. When I wrote my book, it was because I strongly believed (more strongly than I had ever
believed anything in my whole life) that I had discovered a way to communicate that method. So to hear our new President expressing
something similar in his Inaugural address made me very hopeful about the future of our country. Hopefully, the same method
can also be applied to the bowling industry so that we may soon see it blossom to its full potential once again.
See you next week!
Click here to check out an 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 check out "Jason's TV Recap - Uncensored" on PBA.com.
To check out the latest episode of The
Bowling Show >>> Click Here
See you next week!
jason@jasonthomasbowling.com
|
|
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. 
