What I have learned from Bowling
Yup, you read that right. I am a bowler, 10-pin to be specific! A little bit of background on this one: I started bowling when I was four years old; my parents used to bowl and signed my sister and me up for the Saturday morning youth league, but I didn’t really fall in love with it until I tasted my first win.
I was 11 years old, and I bowled in the youth Provincial Championship for Northern Ontario in the 12 and under division (also known as the Bantam division). I don’t remember ever consciously thinking about winning until that tournament. It was a nail-biter and came down to the very last frame (for those who don’t know, one game consists of ten frames, and in this tournament, we bowled 5 games). It was quite shocking to me that I had won; I didn’t even know what that meant at the time, but thankfully for me, it meant I had won my way to the National Championships in April! I then went on and won the National Championships in addition to bowling my first ever 200 game! I wouldn’t quite say I was hooked from then on, it still took a few more years to truly fall in love with bowling.
To be honest, I have had my ups and downs with bowling over the years until recently. It was around 2011/2012 that I realized the amount of pressure I put on myself to bowl well. After not being selected for Team Canada in 2013, I began to question everything. It led to a bit of a breakdown. Am I a good bowler? Why have I not had more “success”? Why do I bowl? Do I even enjoy bowling? I then realized that I identified as a bowler… but I didn't know what that really meant or why it was important. I found that every time I bowled, I was internalizing every result; if I won it meant I was a successful person, and if I lost it meant I was a failure and not worthy.
All of this was living in my subconscious and unconscious mind. I had no idea. I spent the next couple of years trying all sorts of new things and activities to rediscover what brought me joy and what did not. This also coincided with a particularly tough breakup, so it left me with a lot to reflect on in all areas of my life. It also left me watching a lot of Gilmore Girls while cuddling on the couch with my cats! I spent time trying things such as rock climbing, hip hop classes, piano lessons, guitar lessons, vocal lessons, and yoga. I continued to bowl but found myself floundering listlessly while doing so. I didn’t know why I was bowling, and I felt like I was in limbo. At the time, the reasons why I was bowling boiled down to: I have invested so much time in this, I have been bowling for my entire life, people expect me to bowl, my parents paid for me to bowl in college in the States… and while familial guilt had been a major motivator for me in the past, it didn’t seem to hold the same weight anymore.
It took two years before I reconnected with bowling and really understood my why. After trying many different activities and allowing bowling to take a back seat, I found myself missing it. Going forward, whenever I stepped on the lanes, I was pleasantly surprised to find the joy in bowling again! I loved the way my body felt while throwing the ball; the fluidity, flow, and power. I took some time to feel the reasons why I would continue bowling and whether that meant being competitive again.
As someone who was beginning to delve into self-exploration, I realized that the experiences I have had through bowling have shown me the best and worst parts of myself, and it wasn’t all that fun to look into the worst parts of myself. I had avoided it for so long that it eventually led to a breakdown. Whenever I bowled in “major” tournaments, I got nervous and I wouldn’t bowl like myself or feel that fluidity I mentioned. I allowed myself to get swept up in the story and perform for others, rather than for myself. It happened over and over again, and while I experienced some “success”, it wasn’t nearly at the level I was hoping for or expected to perform at.
The deeper I searched, the more I realized that I really wanted to be able to perform at my best and be my most authentic self regardless of the situation and the only way to do that was to keep going deeper inward. As scary as it was, I knew I needed to see and move through the worst parts of myself to do this. In the past, it was when I put myself in “high-pressure” situations that the programs, belief systems, and blocks that held me back showed up the most. Since rediscovering my love for bowling and the desire to be more myself, I have won the Canadian Team Trials and made Team Canada for the past six years. Last year I made the courageous decision to bowl full-time on the Professional Women's Bowling Tour for the first time. It was scary, and those blocks and belief systems certainly showed up in a big way. I have continued to actively work through seeing them, accepting them, and being my most authentic self in all situations, especially “high-pressure" ones.
While there is still a lot more to uncover, I am committed to this path and am open to where this road might take me. Let’s see!