Bowling at Easter

learning what visualisation is really all about

Every Saturday, the writing group I’m in,

Write Hearted

, hosts a Story Gym. Last week’s prompt encouraged us to share a story where you intentionally used positive visualisation to manifest something you wanted, or unintentionally imagined something fearful or negative happening and contributed to the worst thing coming true. Thanks,

Rick Lewis

for hosting that session.

This prompt was a tough one for me. I do not tend to think positive visualisation manifests anything I want – I’m an action gal – and rarely do I let my fear keep me from stepping out, doing it afraid.  I understand the need to think about and visualise what could be, but in the end, you need to take action.  The universe owes me nothing. Does the universe even know I exist? Is the universe even conscious? Anyway, that’s what I think.

But bowling with my family over Easter was a different story.  I learned to bowl when I was a girl scout. Come to think of it, I learned to do a lot of things when I was a girl scout from the age of 7 – 18 years.  Things like camping, sailing, bowling, photography, cooking, batik art and archery were just a few of the activities we did.   Goodness me, in many ways, girl scouts was one of the best things I did, in my childhood, that kept me sane and on the straight and narrow;  that and the Methodist youth group were my sanctuaries. But that’s another story.

Back to bowling.   We have a lot of alphas in my family and when we play, we play, which means compete fiercely.   I made sure that everyone knew I was going to kick some boody and to be prepared to lose badly.  I got the same warning from my (female) siblings and my nephew. 

 My nephew is 6 feet and 27 years old.  I’m 5 feet, 4 inches and 64 years old.   He thought he was going to win, hands down.  The young versus the old (ish) and the tall versus the short (ish) - no contest, right?  Yet, as the game went on, it was a neck-to-neck race between my nephew and me. Others were eating our dust; we were racking up the points, giving each other the evils. The last two frames finally were in play.  It was, at that point, a contest between my nephew and me. Who was going to win?  He looked at me and exclaimed “I’m in your head, Aunt Dana.  There’s absolutely no way you’re gonna win this game!”.  I said “Watch me!”.   But as I approached the lane, I began to micro-think about my stance, the positioning of my arm, the straightening of my wrist, the force of my swing, the number of steps to the line of the lane, the positioning of the arrows pointing to the pins.  “Relax!”, I told myself, “You’ve got this.” But I didn’t.  He was in my head.  How is it that I’m doubting my bowling prowess based on a threat by my nephew?? 

I had two consecutive strikes but then played a gutter ball. He got a strike.  He was ahead. I only needed a spare to win but got only 9 points.  He got a strike and won by 3 points. Dang it!  How had I lost that game? He got into my head and I had feared defeat, which is exactly what happened.  

I can’t wait ‘til the rematch.