One of my favorite inspirational quotes is “Never left the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”

While I love it because it combines baseball and motivation, it also got me thinking. What if you’ve gotten over your fear of striking out, play the game, and strike out anyway?

In that case, a few more metaphors are equally helpful. In life, (or work or school) you’ll get up to bat many times. You might have confidence that you’ll hit the ball, but you strike out. That might day might seem like a total disaster, but there’s a game tomorrow kid. And you’ll get your butt back to that plate again.

Some days, you’ll hit a single and just get through the day. Hopefully most days you’ll get a double, meaning you do good work, make good decisions, and have a good day. Sometimes you’ll get a triple and feel awesome because you did something great. And finally, on those few occasions you’ll hit that ball out of the damn park (into McCovey Cove) and do something epic — anything from nailing a huge project at work, graduating from school, or accomplishing any great goal you’ve set for yourself. (Yes, there’s the grand slam too, but I’m not sure where that fits. Maybe that’s reserved for child birth because that’s crazy hard to do.)

What’s the moral of my ramblings? It might be hard as hell to get up to the plate everyday, but you have to give it everything you can. On the days when you strike out hard, treat yourself to something up lifting. On the days you get a hit, pat yourself on the back and cheer yourself on if there’s not a crowd to do it for you.