Daily Message
blog
Get Out Of Results And Get Into The Process.
There’s a goal that I speak of often. It’s called a “process goal.” Success comes from patiently and persistently doing the right things over and over. Process goals are the “to-do lists” of players striving for excellence. The process is what gives you a chance to find out how good you can be. Here, for instance, is a set of process goals for a competitive bowling event.
If you follow them, you’ll give yourself your best chance to find out how well you can bowl in that bowling event:
• I will trust myself and my over physical game on every shot. I don’t have absolute control of where the ball goes. I do have absolute control of whether I trust myself.
• I will execute my pre shot routine on every shot.
• I will stay in the present. I won’t speculate in the middle of the event about what my score will be, or where I’ll stand in the tournament. I’ll stop worrying about breaking 190, 200 or 220. I will not critique or analyze the shots I’ve taken. I will focus on each shot as it comes, and that will be the only shot I’ll care about. When it’s over, I’ll see how I did and reflect.
• I will refuse to allow anything that happens in the bowling center today to bother me or upset me. I will accept bad breaks and mistakes and be tough in adversity. I am going to be in a good mood and a great state of mind for the entire bowling event today. I’ll enjoy bowling.
• I will trust my instincts and be decisive and committed.
• I will get looser freer and more confident as the league/tournament goes on, resisting the urge to get tighter, more careful and doubtful.
• I will love my opportunities at shooting spares today.
• I will let it go to my target on every shot.
• I will maintain a constant, ideal level of intensity on every shot.
Surrender to the outcome and Win Your Process!
Love The Challenge
No one has ever perfected bowling – not Earl Anthony, not Walter Ray, not Jason Belmonte. I don’t believe anyone ever will. Bowlers who understand and love the game accept it rather than fight it. They realize the essence of bowling is reacting well to inevitable mistakes and misfortunes. They know they can separate themselves from their competition not by perfecting their games but by constantly striving to improve.
I tell bowlers that if there’s one thing they should always be proud of in their games, it’s how well they react to mistakes. I tell them that they will never have complete control of the bowling ball. But they can control their attitudes and more importantly love the challenge.
Do You Talk To Yourself?
How we talk to ourselves can affect many aspects of our performance. Two main results of Self Talk are our emotional state and confidence, two factors that can have a profound impact on our ability to bowl our best. So, if you want to perform to the best of your ability, especially in an important or highly competitive atmosphere, how you talk to yourself is important.
First, practice thinking about events in a positive manner. It is counter productive to tell yourself ‘don’t make a bad shot, don’t miss the spare, don’t pull the ball.’ Instead, think ‘What should I be doing?’. Those same phrases might look like ‘Be you and make a great shot, I will make this spare, and ‘ see target, hit target’. Think: what should I do?
Second, neutralize bowling events perceived as negative. If you dump a ball into the gutter, miss spares or fail to execute a shot when needed, surround that bowling event with as little of emotion as possible. It is ok to acknowledge your disappointment. The key is to minimize the importance and defer the emotion to a time that is more convenient for you to experience it. For example, ‘Missing that spare makes me so angry, but it’s ok. I will be upset a little later’. Then think ‘What adjustments do I have to do NOW to make my next shot?’.
Finally, minimize the importance of a big bowling event. In order to perform your best, you must be calm and carefree. Although a certain level of excitement is ok, it is vital not to cross over into being overly anxious. Rather than think ‘There are so many good bowlers here, and they are so much better than me. How can I possibly compete?’, it would be more useful to think ‘I will treat this try out like a practice. I will perform to the best of my ability, and I will be fine.’
So, lose ‘don’t’ from your vocabulary, become more neutral about errors and mistakes, and create a calm environment even in the most nerve wracking bowling situations for your best performance possible.
Be optimistic, present and positive to Win the Day!
Bowling Challenges
Bowling has some of the biggest challenges of all sports: Not only do you have to roll a ball 60 feet but you have lots of time to think, prepare to make a shot.
This time available to think makes the shot much harder than hitting a baseball, or throwing a pass, or shooting a basket from the three-point line.
Shooting a free throw or throwing a pitch are similar but there are far fewer variables and the action is identical each time. You can practice that identical free throw or pitch thousands of times. In bowling every shot is different, a little or a lot based on lane transition and the spare leave.
In the other sports you do not have time to think. You must react more naturally without trying to control your action. Quickly you find out that thinking about your body while shooting hurts your ability to shoot well. Our ancestors lived and survived because they could do this well. It is built into us.
But in bowling, there is no urgency, the limit of time is based on your next turn on the approach. You have time to think of all kinds of things and try to control your actions, trying not to make a mistake or make a bad shot.
In bowling, every shot counts. That means that every shot and outcome are important.
In baseball, if you get a hit every third time to the plate you could be in the Hall of Fame. No quarterback realistically expects to make every pass.
The natural response to bowling for most of us is to get more careful and deliberate in our preparation to make the shot and then we often try to control our swing or some other physical component to get it just right, or perfect because the outcome counts. We may be trying to avoid a miss or making a bad shot.
This makes us moreleft brained and less athletic. It messes up our trained swing.
Many perform their best bowling when they stop worrying about the outcome or making a mistake. For most players this happens by accident. There are many challenges in our great sport of bowling.
Embrace Pressure
Ask any elite bowler whether they would rather be slightly nervous or completely relaxed before and during a competitive bowling event and they will probably tell you “slightly nervous”, the reason being is that they are more likely to access Flow and play better. When we are playing with high stakes with an uncertain outcome, it activates the nervous system. Research by Steven Kotler of Flow Research Collective suggests that a person needs to reach a certain level of stress (or “arousal”) to trigger Flow.
You will know this as pre-event nerves or first shot jitters which you probably think of as being a sign that you won’t bowl well. But in fact it can be a performance enhancer, provided you can keep your mind in the present. Along with that increased heart rate and feeling of butterflies, comes increased focus and higher sensory awareness that can elevate your bowling performance – we become more mentally and physically alert.
Remember this next time you feel nervous before a league night or tournament. Choose to embrace being out of your comfort zone as it can actually raise your game by inducing Flow.
Start by Simplifying Your Thoughts Over the Shot
One Technique Thought — Before each bowling competition, find one technical thought that you will use for making every shot–preferably simple, and somehow related to a “feel” you are trying to achieve, such as “Smooth Pushaway, Free Swing,” “Soft hand, Smooth Follow Through,” ”Tempo,” etc.
First Impressions — Use first impressions as much as possible when reading lanes and when deciding how to make an adjustment.
Emphasize Tempo — Agree with yourself that you will not work on your swing, footwork, etc. during competition–make your tempo more important than your mechanics.
Relax Between Shots — Take your mind off your round between shots with daydreams, small talk, etc. as much as possible during competition. Do this in Quadrant #1 after you have made a decision to win the next shot.
Visualize — Take a brief, quiet moment behind the approach (Quadrant #2) or on the approach (Quadrant #3) before every shot to visualize the ball path down the lane and through the pins.
Signs of Over-Thinking
Fatigue — One indicator of over-thinking is related to how you feel at the completion of your bowling competition. If you finish feeling mentally drained and very tired, there is a good chance you are thinking too much about your bowling between shots.
Suggestion: Choose to take your mind off your round and on to something positive or neutral that allows you to mentally “rest” between shots. Remember once you make the decision in Quadrant #1 (Think Box), you can now relax.
Distrusting Alignment — Another indicator of over-thinking can be the degree of difficulty you have in trusting your physical game (swing, release, etc), lane play, etc.. As you think more about bowling mechanics, you become too involved with playing “mechanical bowling,” making it difficult to use your natural and trained skills.
Suggestion: Make a commitment to yourself to not work on your any part of your physical game while you are bowling in a competition.
Frustration — Higher than usual frustration levels can also indicate over-thinking. Players that have high expectations and extreme desires to bowl well can slip into trying too hard to get results from their game. Behind it all is a mix of conscious and subconscious obsessive thinking about scores, making perfect shots, stats, making spares, making money, impressing others, winning, etc.
Suggestion: Recognize that priorities for your bowling have become too outcome or result oriented. Challenge yourself with new goals that emphasize simpler thoughts related to the process of making shots.
Rushing or Slowing Your Routine — Changes in your routine can also signal over-thinking. Aggressive players usually rush their normal routines and submissive players generally slow them down. In either case, the results are generally not good because the player gets away from seeing and feeling his or her shot as they do when they are playing well.
Suggestion: Concern yourself with the quality of your routine rather than the importance of the shot when preparing to make the shot. Emphasize (1) commitment to your shot, (2) visualization of your shot, and the (3) feel of one physical thought. A good routine will displace excess, negative and irrelevant thoughts if you make it your priority. In the sport of golf, take a lead from Jack Nicklaus and be especially mindful of coming to a complete stop for a brief quiet moment behind the ball before every shot and putt to get a clear picture of what you want the ball to do.
Over-Thinking
Is the Problem Mental or Physical?
Over-thinking is a problem for bowlers of all levels and it is a problem that is very difficult to recognize in one’s self. Because over-thinking is hard to “self-diagnose,” even the self-aware player can find it difficult to tell whether his or her problems are “mental” or “physical,” especially since the decline of either leads to the same results–poor performance. Over-thinking can sabotage a bowler’s personality strengths by increasing tension, elevating emotions, reducing patience, interfering with commitment and focus, and lowering confidence. These mental changes automatically lead to reduced physical skills. When performance then drops, most players will habitually go directly to work on mechanics without considering that their real problem could simply be over-thinking.
Complicating matters for bowlers is the fact that physical and mental skills are very intricately balanced and intertwined–so much so that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends.
For that reason, any time you are struggling with your game, it will benefit you to assess your mental skills during competition. You can save yourself considerable time and frustration if
you will take steps to ensure you are not over-thinking, ideally, before you work on mechanics.
Examples of Over-Thinking:
Abstract thinkers often must discipline themselves to “play bowling” instead of “playing bowling mechanical tips”–even the pros find this to be a perpetual task. The more an abstract (intelligent) thinker you are, the greater the challenge to manage your thoughts during a bowling competition (game, league night, tournament, etc.).
For one thing, the abstract thinker usually knows much more about the physical bowling game than most and can develop a bad habit of endlessly analyzing his or her play. This was my challenge while competing on tour. The abstract thinker will also fall into other bad habits of over-thinking, such as:
- Over-analyzing the lane conditions.
- Giving yourself far too many options for choosing the correct bowling ball.
- Constantly assessing your play relative to present and past scores, or to the play of other bowlers.
Keep in mind that for bowling, unlike a lot of sports, you have to wait between frames, which gives you plenty of time to think between shots. This typically provides an even greater opportunity for the over-thinker to over-analyze what he or she is doing rather than just doing it, especially when under pressure.
Consider hitting a shot in tennis, for example, where you often have little more than a second to react to the returning ball. You obviously do not have the idle minutes between every tennis shot to be as involved with thinking about how to hit the next shot, or how your various misses can cause you trouble, or how the results will affect your score and position in the tournament, as you likely do when you bowl.
It should be the objective of every over-thinker to manage their thoughts so that natural and trained athletic abilities are used freely to make shots without mental interference.
Stop over thinking to Win the Day!
A conversation between a Cherokee elder and his grandson
One evening a Cherokee elder told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between the two ‘wolves’ that live inside us all. One is Unhappiness. It is fear, worry, anger, jealousy, sorrow, self-pity, resentment and inferiority. The other is Happiness. It is joy, love, hope, serenity, kindness, generosity, truth and compassion. ”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”
The old cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed”.
Feed happiness, joy, love, kindness and compassion to Win the Day!
Be More Present
“The ego doesn’t exist in the present moment: To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important.” – Eckhart Tolle
Being “in the present” is so important in bowling. It frees your mind from negative thinking and your ego, allowing you to just be and get access to your best skills. The challenge we have today, is that nobody is ever truly present – we are constantly distracted (mostly by our mobile devices), and this doesn’t help us in the bowling center. We’re losing the ability to be present, and we are at the mercy of every thought that pops into our heads.
The ancient practice of meditation and mindfulness is all about improving a person’s ability to access the present moment and increasing awareness of what they are focusing on and how they feel. With this practice you develop more self-control, and more control over your “performance state”, instead of allowing your thinking to dictate it.
I advise all my students to start a daily practice of meditation and mindfulness, as it has so many benefits (beyond bowling). We have discussed this on Mental Monday.
Samurai Warriors adopted Zen Buddhism and meditation because it allowed them to fight with an “empty mind”. For these swordsman, having an empty mind was vital in the midst of combat as it freed them from doubt, fear and focus on technique. Of course they trained technique, but when combat began, all thinking departed and the purity of the action took over. This is how we need to be on the approach– less thinking and more playing.
Tomorrow we will discuss being more MINDFUL and I’ll share an exercise with you.
Start thinking about becoming more PRESENT to Win the Day!
Mike Shady Bowling
Mike Shady
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