I recently enjoyed an afternoon of bowling with a dear family friend. I will preface that we both score in the 40s–60s per game on average. We got off to a rough start so I had them take a moment with me to refocus our efforts. I mentioned that we need to take all of our energy; the good, bad, and the ugly, and use it to make things happen for us in a positive way. We both immediately went from just a few pins to spares and strikes. We played for awhile, but suddenly my friend hit a snag. For four frames they were stuck with all threes. We had another pow-wow, and I mentioned that “it's not a sport or a game; it’s just math.” After a few minutes they were ready to try again. Strike! Strike!! Strike!!! They looked in my direction with a huge grin on their face.
With their spirits raised to quite a ruckus I decided to shake things up a bit for the two of us. With the bumpers up I thought why not try this pinball-style bumping the ball back and forth across the lane as it headed to its mark. So I took a few frames to test my theory, and I got a strike and a spare. Things were beginning to take shape.
I also started spinning my body around effortlessly numerous times while I was skipping up the lane before releasing the ball. Once we added spinning our bodies around the energy we generated was palpable. We were bending math to our will. My friend continued having a great game as I experimented with yet another test: closing my eyes while I spun around and headed to the line to release the ball. Essentially I was adhering to Obi Wan Kenobi’s advice to Luke just moments before he blew up the Death Star: “Let go your conscious self and act on instinct.” In doing so we broke free from our minds’ constraints on our performance. By living in and embracing the moment we were able to apply laser focus as we bowled along with the remainder of our games.
After numerous spares and a few strikes we had wrapped up our third game. We tallied our final combined total between three games at 598 points (our usual average was 300 points). Even with the four sets of 3s in a row my buddy beat me two games out of three.
“Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them,” Obi-Wan noted. “Let go your conscious self and act on instinct.”
— Obi-Wan Kenobi portrayed by Alec Guinness, Star Wars, 1977. Twentieth Century Fox.