I have a horrible time with self motivation. I would venture that a lot of you do, too. Sure, I get things done. I actually excel in the corporate environment. But when I get home I’m fairly useless and unmotivated.

I don’t like it, I want to change, and I’m sure there are readers out there with the same desire.

I want to get motivated. There are things at home that NEED to get done and things that I would like to accomplish. I’d like to be a published author, I’d like to be a respectable artist…the list is extensive.

Recently I had an epiphany that lit a fire under my ass and jump started my motivation away from work. It’s not anything shocking, and in fact I’ve written about it before. A couple of times. In those old posts I was waxing philosophic and adopting a general woe’s me attitude.

But I’ve finally heard what I already knew stated in a way that made it click.

What The Tigers Taught Me About Life

I’m from Michigan and the Detroit Tigers will always be my team, no matter how many years in a row they choose to ignore their complete lack of a bullpen.

In 2012 Miguel Cabrera, the Tiger’s then third baseman, won the Triple Crown for the first time in nearly 50 years. For the baseball unitiated, the Triple Crown is an unofficial title given to a player that leads their respective league in home runs, runs batted in, and batting average for the year. It’s tough enough, in today’s baseball, to win one of those awards. To win all three is damn near impossible.

But Cabrera did it (and he was humble as all hell, too). It’s not so much the award that I want to talk about, it’s the numbers behind the award. I pulled these stats from Baseball-Reference.com.

In 2012 Miguel Cabrera played in 161 of 162 games. In those games he had 622 at bats. That’s 622 attempts to hit the ball.

Of those 622 attempts he hit the ball 205 times, for a batting average .330. Better than anyone else in the American League.

He had 139 RBIs. Of his 205 hits a runner scored 139 times (not EXACTLY how the stat is calculated, but close enough). Better than anyone else in the American League.

And of those 205 hits, 44 of them were home runs. Better than anyone else in the American League.

What Does Miguel Cabrera Have To Do With Art?

One of my favorite quotes from Ernest Hemingway:

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the waste basket.

Now, it’s almost guaranteed that Hemingway didn’t keep accurate statistics on how many pages he ended up throwing away; that the above quote is an estimate. The point is that it took the man a LOT of attempts to produce something worth publishing.

The same can be said of Miguel Cabrera. The batting average that won him the title in 2012, the batting average better than ALL of the players in the American League, was .330. Miggy hit the ball 33% of the time.

A baseball player’s job is hitting the ball, a job that he failed at 7 out of 10 times. But even failing 7 out of 10 times he was STILL better than ALL other players at his level. 3 hits out of 10 at bats is likely to earn him a spot in the Hall of Fame as well.

And Then It Hit Me

Achieving success 3 out of 10 times is worthy of a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Producing 1 page of masterpiece for every 10 pages of garbage is worthy of a respected writing career.

10% success, or even 30% success, seemed really shitty to me. I pulled a freaking A average all through school; 90% or nothing.

BUT 90% IS NOT LIFE!!!

If you’re lucky, if you devote 10,000 to practicing religiously, if you put forth effort on a consistent basis 10% is GREAT! 30% will make you an all star!

I have to give myself permission to suck.

I’m squirrely as hell when it comes to writing. I’ve started and stopped more stories in the last 6 months than I care to think about.

I’ve got reams and reams of half finished sketches that I didn’t think were good enough. I stopped, put them aside, and started working on the next one.

Deep, deep down I was terrified of anything less than perfection. And THAT’S not ok. Perfection CAN happen, but it’s only going to happen if I produce on a consistent basis.

So, that’s the lesson that baseball taught me about how to stop my crippling fear. Sometimes all it takes is someone phrasing something I already know in a new way to really get it into my head.

The baseball analogy worked for me, hopefully it’ll work for you, too.

Thanks for reading.