Busy seasons have a way of pulling us off center—holidays, travel, pressure, expectations, all the noise that creeps in around the edges. And yet, in those moments, I keep coming back to a single mindset shift that’s followed me since I was twelve years old.

It came from the first mental-game book I ever read. A bowling book, of all things, with a stick-figure bowler on the cover and a thought bubble floating over his head:

“There’s nothing important about this shot.”

At twelve, I didn’t get it.
How could a shot not be important?
Every frame felt huge. Every moment felt like everything.

But years later, after competing long enough to know what fear feels like in your fingertips, that little sentence grew into a truth I still rely on: when you strip the weight off a moment, you free yourself to perform in it. When you stop labeling a frame as “important,” you return to your baseline—the competitor you trained to be, not the panicked version of you trying to protect an outcome.

And that lesson found me again, years later, halfway around the world.

I was bowling the World Ranking Masters, the only American woman competing—carrying that invisible pressure of representing an entire country. And I was lost. Absolutely lost. Nothing made sense on the lanes, and I could feel the moment tightening around me.

I went to my ball rep, the smartest guy I knew in the sport, expecting the kind of deep lane-play advice only he could give. I told him, flat out, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He looked at me and said,
“I want you to feel lucky.”

I actually made him repeat it.
Feel lucky? Now?
But that tiny request cracked the pressure I was drowning in.

Because sometimes perfection doesn’t win.
Trying harder doesn’t win.
Presence wins. Lightness wins. Feeling lucky wins.

In that moment, his words pulled me out of overthinking and into something simpler, freer. And once I stopped gripping the moment so tightly, my game started to breathe again.

So how do you use this?
How do you take a mindset like this and make it part of your own life—especially in seasons when everything feels heavy?

You remind yourself of this:
Even when you feel lost, you can choose your mindset.
Sometimes you have to borrow a feeling you don’t quite believe yet—luck, ease, calm—and let it guide you until it becomes real. It’s “fake it till you make it,” but with intention. You’re not pretending to be someone else; you’re shifting back into who you already are.

And in the biggest moments of your life—on the lanes, in a conversation, at the Thanksgiving table, during a decision you’re scared to make—try telling yourself:

There’s nothing important about this shot.

Because if you can stand there, breathe, and convince yourself that this moment isn’t as big as your mind wants it to be… you stop trying and start being. And that’s when your best self finally steps forward.