Remember when you were young and you had that favorite outfit? You felt so great in that outfit. Invincible. But then you grew out of it. And that was hard. How could you live without that outfit? But you did. 

Growing out of something can be difficult. Like you don’t know how life will ever go on difficult. What it does do is create space for growth and allows in new opportunities. It’s important to know when it’s time to move on from anything. That never means it’s going to be easy though. And just because it’s not easy, doesn’t make it not right.

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At the risk of getting really personal- I get emotionally attached to things. Even when I know it’s right, it is sometimes hard for me to move on. Like with our last condo in Chicago. We brought both the kids home from the hospital to that condo. They both learned how to walk in that hallway. They learned how to talk there. There were really special memories over Christmas with my grandma Betty there and John’s mom who has also since passed away. When we really felt we were starting to grow out of it, our kids were getting big and Madden was playing basketball over the kitchen counter into a basketball hoop. At that point, I was like, okay, I think it’s time they have more space to play.

It was really difficult to move on but we knew it was the right move and the right time. But I had a really hard time with it emotionally. There is one thing that I do when I am struggling with an overload of emotions. I write. And so I wrote. I wrote a letter to my condo. If you are REALLY interested in reading the pouring out of my heart you can read it here:  I find that when I feel emotions so deeply, I feel drawn to writing letters. It is really therapeutic for me. I did the same thing when my grandma passed away. I think it helps with getting some sort of abstract closure. 

It was still really hard emotionally to let go of Team USA too. And, bowling full time for that matter. I dedicated 15 years of my life to traveling the world and competing for my country with them. But something in me just told me it was time to let that go. I’ve always said that I know the decisions that I’m going to make based on how it makes me feel. I just knew in my gut that it was time to give younger bowler’s the chance to experience it and to not hang on too long. And even though I knew it was the right choice, it still was a hard choice.

But what that did was free up space in my life to pursue other things. Taking the difficult step to move on also opens you up to what is next. Now that I’m not on the road all of the time with Team USA, there’s space in my life to figure out where and how I can have the most impact and move towards that. Every single day, I’m always really tuned into my intuition about what that might be. And I keep following those feelings. So that’s what I’m doing now in my life. And that’s how I built the Elite Youth Tour. It’s hopefully going to stick around for forever! But it’s not all I want to do. I also have more plans forming about how I can have impact and what’s great is I still have the space to allow for those new opportunities to take shape too. I keep thinking that I know I’m going to know exactly when the right opportunity comes along. If I were just hanging onto my old self, my Team USA self, none of this would be possible. I wouldn’t have been able to expand into who I am now and have impact in so many more ways. (Spoiler: Something really awesome is coming and I cannot wait for it to take shape.)

I think that’s important to acknowledge when you’re making big decisions in your life to lean into that intuition. For me, it’s just like a gut feeling that it’s right even when outwardly everything appears difficult.

I believe everyone can tune into that. I believe that everyone is intuitive, but not everyone is listening and tuning in to how things really make them feel inwardly. Most are too outwardly focused. They are also holding on to the past. Many believe that if they put all of their energy into one area of their life and they completely dedicate themselves to it- that they are that forever. But the reality is- it doesn’t define you. It’s just a piece of you at that moment in your life.

When you feel it though, you’ll just know. That’s how intuition works. You just feel deeply that there is no other way. When I met my husband John (you can catch up on that story in my post about love and “French Fries”), I was only 18 years old. But I just knew I was going to be with him forever. There was no question in my mind.

Who you are around should resonate with you. I’ve talked a lot about how the importance of the people you are surrounded by is important to keeping you inspired and motivated. It’s also true though that sometimes people just come into your life for a certain period of time. And it’s okay to let go and move on from people when you grow out of them. You may grow at different rates, and being around them no longer feeds your soul. You may have grown into different people than when you first became friends, and that happens to a lot of friendships. I just acknowledge that they might not have been meant to be there alongside me forever. But we’ll always have that time we had together. That can happen a lot with friendships, and it’s okay. Having had those relationships, and those lessons it brought, is also part of what allowed you to expand into the version of yourself you are today.

If you are facing a difficult decision about the direction to take, or if it is time to let go of something, my advice is always to tune into how it makes you feel. If tuning in doesn’t come as easily to you as it does to me, try going somewhere quiet. I sometimes do this too to stay tuned in, and I’ll do a quiet meditation for a few moments. I’ll slow everything down, get away from life’s noise, and allow myself to be. In those moments of meditation, see what inner messages appear. From my experience, those are usually the right ones to follow.