As I was watching a Detroit Tigers baseball game last week,
I thought about our theme. How do you measure success or failure? If you succeed
only four out of ten times, that means you fail 60% of the time. Yet, Miguel
Cabrera, whose batting average is .350, is an 8-time All Star, was voted
American League MVP in 2013 for the second consecutive season, and is considered
one of the best hitters in baseball. On Friday, he hit his 2,000th career hit,
the 7th youngest in history. And that’s for a man who fails to get a
hit more than six out of ten times.
What does that tell us? If baseball players who are paid big
bucks to play for our entertainment, rarely (if ever) succeed half the time,
who are we to give up when we occasionally fail? Players who strike out go back
and try again.
With anything we try—sending manuscripts to agents or
editors, losing weight, running a marathon—we’re probably going to fail part of
the time. We could give up. (Been there, done that.) It all depends on how
badly we want something. It can be depressing to fail. I remember a quote
attributed to Thomas Edison (during the movie National Treasure) about inventing the light bulb. He didn’t fail,
he found 2,000 ways how not to make a light bulb.
Let’s hope we don’t have to find 2,000 ways how not to get
our book published or lose weight. We just need to find that one way that
works. What works for some people might not work for us. We have to try and try
again until we find success.
I
blog here on the 8th and 30th of each month and Mondays on my own blogsite http://dianeburton.blogspot.com
6 comments:
Way to put success and failure into a workable perspective, Diane. Your words are encouraging!
Very well said. I love that quote by Edison. And, of course, I love your baseball analogy. :-) There's another quote I like, something along the lines of, the only way to guarantee failure is to stop trying. Something like that. Anyway, thanks for the entertaining, uplifting post!
Glad you found the post encouraging, Margo.
Alicia, I knew you'd like the baseball reference. :)
I always like hearing the stories about how JK Rowling or Stephen King got rejected a gazillion times. Gives me hope that someone is just waiting out there to discover me. Yep, try, try again has to be our mantra.
Powerful message. You're right. Even the UConn team didn't win all their games. We just have to keep improving. :)
Jannine, good mantra.
Melissa, you're right. If we don't improve, we get stale.
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