How Playing Men’s Baseball in My 30’s Helped Me As An Entrepreneur
Dealing with failure as a human being is hard. Dealing with it as an entrepreneur is even harder — usually it involves others who are counting on you whether it’s for a paycheck, to support your endeavors, or your kids.
Failure is a nasty cruel mistress that can paralyze you if you let it or it can serve a tool to help you succeed if you let it — the choice is up to you.
If anyone’s ever played or enjoyed watching sports that’s a great mentality to help with that: just put it behind you. Immediately afterwards, you’re going to have another chance to redeem yourself whether with another batter, another ground ball or fly ball to you, or another at bat — you’ll have a chance to put it past you. Especially with baseball it’s all about getting a TON of chances: think about it, a good batting average is .250–350 — in anything else in life that’s horrible, but when you play the odds (160+ games a year) it’s not bad.
Play the long game, put those small moments past you, and make sure you kill it on the next one.
For me personally, it was also a lesson in life-learning that forced me into this mindset. At 32 years of age, in effort to meet new friends and stay active, I joined a 30+ Men’s Baseball League, after some 12 years away from the game.
As you can imagine, it’s been rough getting back into the swing of things, playing with guys who played in college, the minors, and guys who just love baseball. But I’ve been making sure I keep putting in the work, going to the batting cages, taking live batting practice, practicing ground balls and pop ups on the field until it’s dark out — all in an effort to be better during game time and help my team.
Now, all that work aside, it naturally will take time so there’s instances in games where I make an error or strike out and I’m PISSED, but I realize I have to remember:
YOU’VE PUT IN THE WORK, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO, STOP BEING UP IN YOUR HEAD AND — JUST BREATHE.
Then suddenly after I let it go and shake it off, the next at bat or next chopper hit towards me I redeem myself and suddenly I don’t remember or care about the ball I missed or strike out. It’s been very therapeutic for me both mentally and physically the last year.
I’ve been striving to take that mentality into my everyday life as an entrepreneur — keep putting in the work everyday, keep taking swings, and don’t fret; there will always be a chance to redeem yourself and you better be ready.
