Mindset. It’s been on my mind lately. Maybe it’s because of my win a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s because I’ve actually seen the demise of a bowler on the lanes solely from their mindset. 

Mindset is everything, really.

I’ve written before about what I call the “culture of winning” – the importance of setting yourself up to do your best, no matter the actual outcome of the game. I even wrote a book with that title! 

I believe winning is a culture and a process and that becoming a champion isn’t about an all-or-nothing outcome. It’s also about putting yourself all in and having no regrets, no matter the result.

Bowling the Luci doubles in Houston with EJ, I put everything out there. I have no regrets. In general, that’s the way that I live my life on and beyond the lanes.

I could have easily chosen not to go for it. I could have held myself back, telling myself, “Oh, I’m not at my peak anymore and he is.”  I could have worried about letting him down. I could have made excuses as to why I wouldn’t be ready. Instead, I just went for it with all I had in me. From the weeks of preparation with anti-inflammatories for my knee to the extra practices, I put everything out there. I prepared myself the best I could, even though it felt a little scary. I went for it. And it paid off. Even if we wouldn’t have won, I know I would still have no regrets.

Sometimes you have to flip the script. Instead of telling yourself that you failed because you didn’t come out on top – how about you acknowledge the good stuff you learned along the way? Because that’s a win. 

That’s the champion mindset flip and the way to maintain a winning mindset no matter what, with no regret. That philosophy is applicable throughout your life, not just in competitive situations. 

As long as you prepare yourself the best that you can, put your heart behind it, and do your best, you’ve done everything. That’s all that you can do.

I always want to live my life that way so that when I look back on it in five or ten years, I won’t have regrets. You can never get that time back and you don’t get a do-over on those choices. There’s a quote that I love that says, “You know all those things you’ve wanted to do? You should go do them.” That’s an attitude I can get behind. It’s a simple idea, but yet so many people don’t embrace it.

People don’t go after that thing that is always on their mind, that thing they cannot stop thinking about. Instead of just going after it, they think about it, don’t do it, and then later spend even more time thinking about what if they had. Then they regret it. Most people make choices to live their life in a very safe way. But if you always play it safe and live in this sort of safety zone, you also don’t give yourself the opportunity to experience dreams coming true. If you always do what you’ve always done then you’ll always be what you’ve always been.

The way I look at it, when you play it safe instead of going for it, you’re taking an even bigger risk. You are risking not doing it. When you take the leap, you are giving yourself chances that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Leaping outside your safe zone is a decidedly vulnerable place to be though. You have to accept that even if you go for it, it might not work out. You have to develop a layer of grit in accepting it without regrets. You have to ask yourself, can I handle it not working out?

I was just talking to a young girl about this at EYT last week. I’m surrounded by baseball with my son Madden going after his baseball dreams with all he’s got (shout out to his MVP award last week), so I used a baseball analogy when talking to her. I said that sometimes when people are afraid of failing, they don’t swing at all. They convince themselves that if they strike out when they don’t swing, it won’t mean they’re a failure. They tell themselves, it’s okay because they didn’t really try at all. That’s a safe zone people falsely create for themselves. It feels riskier to take the swing.

BUT…what if you had taken a swing at it? Maybe you would have hit that home run.

I can’t think of anything worse than not going for it. When you swing and you miss, don’t interpret it as a failure. It’s just a risk you took. Sometimes your bat connects and sometimes it doesn’t. And even when it doesn’t, you strike out swinging. That’s how to maintain a winning mindset no matter what.

It’s easy to live in your comfort zone, not taking many risks. Not dealing with the feelings of defeat. Try to think about it another way, so you don’t miss out on opportunities for winning and having success on the lanes – or in your life. You can look at the next risky move and say: It may be scary in the moment but I don’t want to be that person who strikes out looking.

In my life, so many great things have come out of my choice to live life without regret. It’s how I risked going to Nebraska, even when it would have been easier to follow my sister. It’s how I started EYT 11 years ago without having a clue how it would turn out. It’s how I took the leap to bowl with EJ at the Luci Doubles earlier this month. 

Accepting the risk of “failure” is a powerful way to live.

Take risks. And if you do strike out – strike out swinging.