The Inner Game of Sports

The fastest way to see if you are aligned with yourself is in sports. The proof is always in the pudding. Of all places, I really noticed this today when I bowled for the first time in months. Bowling has always been a fun sport to me and movies like The Big Lebowski and King's Pin put some comedy to it whenever I'd find myself playing with friends.

Usually when I bowled, I treated the sport as some academic feat. If I apply the right force in the right direction, I will execute correctly. Now, this line of thinking is perfect for a target locking Air Force missile, calculating every minute, discrete step it has to take. But for a human, at least for me, this path was never too smooth. The path of logic, to me, is a path of fear. No faith. Relying on someone's (or my own) "common" sense instead of feeling.

Before I get bashed to shreds, it is important to use structured logic in a structured operation: mathematics, accounting, or any formula fitting endeavor. This is because those acts require simple discrete steps to achieve the exact same results multiple times—i.e., someone else (or you) already figured them out.

Today however, in the middle of my game, I decided to think about bowling the same way I thought about women, career, and success: with faith, conviction, and passion. I looked at the pins 50 or so feet in front of me and thought of how cool it would be to knock down the pins. I had full faith it would be done and felt gratitude. Then, I let my body do the work, going into the standard position that I had learned years ago and I just released the ball. Boom! Strike! Though I didn't get a strike every time, sometimes I missed completely, but before this little revelation, I was down by a lot. I won that game in the end.

Doesn't that sound a lot like the three steps of Law of Attraction? Ask, Let it happen, Receive.

Somehow, doing it this way felt much more right. I simply wanted the bowling pins to go in. It's damn cool when they all go down, just about anyone can agree with that. But, at the same time, I didn't worry about success, I didn't care too much. I just felt it'd be sweet to see the pins go down. Then, I just went through the motions of throwing the ball. I can't say I'd have gotten strikes and high points if I had never bowled before and didn't know basic technique. All I can say is, I let my body do its thing. I let my "faith" or "conviction" or "soul" play the director role and my body played the worker role. I was amazed how straight the ball went. Or, if I threw the ball with a special spin, how the ball spun in the exact way to it the middle pins. Beautiful. I loved it.

My new friends were complimenting me, which took me aback. Honestly, I didn't notice the scores till I abandoned my spiritual mindset and fell back into my old validation seeking mindset. At times, disconnecting from my validation-seeking-mindset was hard—I'd go up to throw the ball but my mind was struggling to let go of validation. This literally felt like a struggle till I just relaxed. Sometimes, as I threw the ball even with faith, I messed up, slipped, or completely got it wrong and missed. These felt like doubts to my faith whenever I was in validation mode.

When I was in my spiritual mode, missing a shot just felt like I was observing an occurrence and I was totally okay with it. I didn't care. No pins, oh well. Next time. There felt like infinite next times.

It can be hard to maintain a spiritual mindset in the face of success, at least for me. After I get what I want, it is so easy—almost natural—for me to go back into validation seeking mode. I am realizing more and more this faith, or spiritual, way of living is a mindset for the long haul. It can't be used as a tool—it literally fails as a tool. The fastest way to prove this to yourself truly is sports. I don't mean playing basketball against Paul Pierce, losing badly, and thinking you are terrible. I suggest doing personal sports like bowing where it is just you and the ball. Maybe free throws in basketball. Perhaps pitches in baseball or a batting cage. Even cross country running—which is a huge mind game, at least for me.

I find my inner game in sports, in simple activities. I test my faith there. Do I give up at the slightest struggle, do I allow external validation—which includes getting a strike—dictate my faith? I got to say, if I had full faith yet lost every time, it would be pretty hard to convince me that faith is the way to go in these matters. But I just don't believe it works that way. It really hasn't yet. I fucking won that bowling ball game and that isn't to brag or to boast myself. It is just what happened.

The biggest thing to remember is the second step in Law of Attraction—let it happen. Letting "it" happen means learning the basics, being familiar with the situation, and allowing yourself to Just Do It. Just like how Michael Jordan and Nike said it "Just do It" it's the second rule in LoA and a damn good philosophy.