10 Keys to Finding Success – Part 2

In my last article, we covered the first five of my top 10 keys to achieving success. In this article, we will continue this discussion by going through the next five principles on my list.

The goal here is to help shift your mindset. These principles are not specific to bowling, but they are easily relatable to your approach to practice and competition. By adopting the right mindset, we increase our chances of success.

As I mentioned last time, because I don’t believe that any of these are more important than the others, they will all be #1. Perhaps one of these keys will help unlock more of your potential.

#1: Relate your practice with your competition

By now, every serious athlete has heard the phrase “practice with a purpose.” This is obviously very important, but it misses the second key piece of preparation. The purpose of your practice is to prepare for competition, so you need to make sure that your practice is related directly to your upcoming events.

Success and achievement are often the result of deliberate, focused, and purposeful practice and preparation that are directly related to your goals and expected challenges. By maintaining this alignment, you increase your chances of reaching your desired outcomes—whether it be on the lanes or in life in general.

Let’s look at a simple example. Assuming you know the oil pattern that will be put out at an upcoming tournament, you want to practice your skills for the area of the lane you expect to play. On a shorter pattern, for example, you’ll want to focus more on straighter launch angles and outside breakpoints.

If you spend all your time bowling deep inside lines because that is where you are most comfortable, you aren’t practicing with the purpose of performing well at the upcoming event.

Of course, if you don’t know much about the environment, you must practice all your skills, particularly the ones you use most, ...