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(Page Updated 12/4/25)

From Where Did the Optima Bowling Site Emerge?

I'm glad you asked. It all started in June 1968, high school graduation day, when I committed to resolving the apparent wicked problem with the question: What the hell is wrong with this crazy world of ours? The Optima Bowling Coach and site flowed authentically out of what, where, when, who, how, and why of my life experiences, consequences, and lessons taught and learned. I am The Optima Bowling Coach; I have been a coach, in some capacity or another, since I was 14 years old.

The following story is a digested and regurgitated version of my autobiography as a quick study of available ideas, knowledge, comprehension, and understanding of a specific historical period. The relationship between existence and a story is found in an individual's lifespan. All that one has accomplished, all the up-to-the-moment outcomes of the individual, as measured by the development of the three aspects of existence (matter, consciousness, and motion/energy/will), are ever-wedged between the past and the future. And the perspective of the present is always revealed within the hybridization of past-stream, mainstream, and future-stream ideas.

Integrating My Autobiography Into a Historical Study of Ideas (1950–2025)

I am using this autobiographic study as a window for you to observe the broader intellectual, cultural, and social transformations from 1950 to the present. By exploring the wicked problem revealed as our crazy world in the context of my evolving worldview, professional pursuits, and personal transitions, I aim to show how my individual story reflects and interacts with the more extensive history of ideas. In doing so, I hope to highlight how I have been shaped by the times and, in my way, will continue to learn and shape the intellectual energies that flow through and around me.

Blending My Personal Experiences with Historical Context

Instead of treating my autobiography and the historical developments of the time as separate, I view them as intertwined. I recognize that human beings are products of the era in which they live as active performers. With its progress through athletics, coaching, consciousness development, and the Psychology of Lifespan Performance and Perceptual Control (the LPPC model), my life can serve as a case study of how ideas stream into a person's life and evolve.

Situating My Key Life Transitions in Their Larger Setting

How did the social and cultural conditions between 1950 and 2025 influence my growth and perspective, culminating in Optima Bowling as the ultimate result?
Which specific moments in my life (such as the pivotal year of 1968) mirror or diverge from broader historical or intellectual shifts?
Understanding why I maintained my commitment to a singular wicked problem and proposed to resolve it in June 1968, as simply our crazy world.

My 1968 Turning Point

What was happening in the world in 1968: It was a year of international upheaval, political protests, the intensification of the Vietnam War, and widespread questioning of authority and social norms. Critical theories, civil rights ideologies, and countercultural movements challenged entrenched worldviews. Meanwhile, new scientific paradigms in systems thinking and environmental awareness began shaping discourse.
What was happening in my life: Against this backdrop, I entered what I now refer to as the future-stream transition from ignoring worlds to working upon worlds, shifting my priorities from a purely athletic focus to an intellectual engagement in a study of this crazy world of ours. What were the causes within my environment, community, and personality development? I find that this period of transformation, aligned with the era's broader spirit of rethinking personal identity and societal structures, involves questioning assumptions, amplifying diverse perspectives, and collaboratively constructing new ways for people to coexist and thrive. It's a shift that acknowledges the fluidity of identity and the capacity of communities to transform, often leading to more inclusive, equitable, and dynamic societies. Of course, hybridization with mainstream ideas remains in its path.

The 1990 Phase (Marriage, Parenthood, Bowling Coach)

Historical Context of the early 1990s: After the end of the Cold War, the United States and the world entered an era of rapid globalization, technological expansion, and the rise of the Internet. People were also engaged in public debates about economic restructuring, work-life balance, and new family dynamics.
My Life Story at This Time: Immersed in this new phase that combined parenthood and a "real" job, my free time was devoted to bowling, coaching, and the required community involvement. In hindsight, my work on the mainstream coaching skills necessary to coach young people bowling as a sport reflected a broader cultural focus on mentorship, skill-building, and guided self-improvement, trends that have steadily gained traction in American society.

Post-2008 Era (Divorce, Personal Loss, Scholar Phase)

What the world looked like post-2008: The global financial crisis led to job losses and renewed questions about capitalism, markets, and societal priorities. Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, conversations about surveillance, climate change, public health crises, and social inequality shaped cultural and intellectual debates.
Where I found myself: Between a divorce (2008) and the tragic loss of my adult child to COVID-19, I once again attended to the search for clarity. Using the LPPC model, I re-examined the 1968 question: "What the hell is wrong with this crazy world of ours?" The intense study of individual consciousness, the meaning of life, how humanity can approach a resolution of and the way beyond the world's singular wicked problem. As a personal action research inquiry, it paralleled global reflections on resilience, mental health, and the nature of wellness.

Mapping My Intellectual Growth Onto Wider Movements

From Physical Personality to Mental

Moving from a concentration on physical performance (competitive athletics) to expanding my exploration of personality development to include identifying with the emotional and mental levels. In retrospect, I can see how my evolution aligned with several future-stream intellectual and cultural developments that pertain to Optima Bowling.

The Human Potential Movement (1960s–1970s): HPM mirrors my early exploration of the era's emphasis on Eastern spirituality, transpersonal psychology, and holistic health.
Systems Thinking and Environmental Consciousness: My diverse academic majors, engineering, environmental design, business, cultural history, and photography, reflected the growing awareness of interconnected systems and perspective thinking that would define dialogue around sustainability and complexity.

My Role as a Coach and Mentor

Coaching has been and remains central to my life, as demonstrated by my studies of and future-stream evolutionary applications of coaching as a discipline that extends far beyond sports into personal development and corporate environments. From the 1980s onward, coaching became recognized for emphasizing lifelong learning and the structured development of practical skills and essential qualities.

Psychology of lifespan performance and perceptual control

What the Hell is Wrong With This Crazy World of Ours?

Personally, I found the resolution of the wicked problem by following the LPPC Model as an intellectual synthesis. The future-stream Psychology of Lifespan Performance and Perceptual Control is built on the hybridization of past-stream, mainstream, and future-stream ideologies that have roots in developmental psychology, cybernetics, and personal narrative theory:

Developmental Psychology: Thinkers such as Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget, among others, examined how individuals develop through stages, refining knowledge and self-identity over time.
Cybernetics and Control Theory: The idea of self-regulating systems resonates with my understanding of feedback loops. This principle lies at the heart of control theory and has influenced various fields.
Narrative Identity and Autobiographical Reasoning: The LPPC notion of "living as essentially a historical, autobiographical life" closely aligns with research showing how individuals use stories to make sense of their past and guide their future.

Then, in 2023, my research into the Mystic's level of emotional self-consciousness revealed the solution. Here, I discovered that even a being at the highest level of emotionality would not be enough to solve the issue. To pin down a specific approach to the resolution, I initiated the phrase, self-research for self-development, as the movement of an ascending progression by centering self-consciousness at each level of being: physical organism-etheric, emotional repulsive-attractive, and mental-causal to master the Integrated Self, ultimately and only then fully resolve the wicked problem.

See More: Self-Control

Reflections: Evolution of Perspective-Thinking

With this account of my life story, I have realized how personal biography and indiscriminate historical forces intersect:

From Postwar Athletics to Self-Actualization: Even as a young athlete in post-war America, I approached life with a cerebral mindset, engaging with complex questions about life's purpose and the development of consciousness, alongside simpler, sincere thoughts that addressed real-time athletic performance issues.
Consciousness Development and the Age of Ideas: My progression as I integrate diverse academic studies and introspective practices reflects the broadened intellectual horizons, the need for holistic understanding, and the drive toward self-realization of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

By positioning my autobiography within the timeline of my lifespan, 1950–2025, I offered a peek into how my transitions, challenges, and the LPPC model are interconnected with the comprehensive flow of ideas over the past seven decades to emphasize the far-reaching relationship between an individual's life and the unfolding historical narrative that is the singular wicked problem known as our crazy world. And not surprisingly, the resolution developed from the hybridization of past-stream, mainstream, and future-stream ideas.

That is the what, where, when, who, how, and why of The Optima Bowling Coach website and practice, presented as the life-spanning activation of the personal self-research for self-development; the research to livelihood development phase. If you please, do play along