I love baseball, I love to watch it, and I love to play it.

I played a year of little league when I was 11 or so.

I wasn’t very good. In fact, I kinda sucked.

One day at little league practice I had trouble hitting the ball. The more I fixated on it, the more nervous I became, and the harder it got to hit it. I got frustrated, and nervous, and anxious. All my team mates were watching. The more I fixated on hitting the ball, the harder it got.

It was humiliating, and it hurt my confidence to play baseball.

It hurt my confidence so much that I didn’t even make it into the major leagues as a pro baseball player. Maybe my life would be different if I just wouldn’t have fixated on the ball so much.

Home runs are better than strike outs, third base is better than first base

Somehow, baseball has worked its way into our collective “hitting on girls” vernacular.

We get to first base, second base, score, and strike out (like I did last night — even I don’t hit all of them out of the park).

I keep thinking back to that day in little league practice though, when I was so fixated on hitting the ball, that I repeatedly struck out. I thought that it can be really similar to learning how to flirt with women.

I remember being in bars and getting so fixated on trying to approach a woman and work my magic on her that I couldn’t actually do it. At least, not well. The more I fixated on this the more nervous I got, and struck out a lot of times.

This was very common when I was starting out my path to learn how to and be comfortable with picking up chicks. I was learning new skills and pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone, two things that drive a person to fixate on what they are doing.

If you have ever thought you should hit on a woman, but weren’t sure what to do, or what to say, or if you learned some lines somewhere and tried them out with a few women in a bar, without really being comfortable with the interaction, you may have experienced what I am talking about.

When you get into this state of mind when you are fixating on what to do when you talk to women, it lends itself to getting more and more nervous about what you are doing.

Hitting home runs should be fun.

The way to snap out of it when this happens is to jar that fixation somehow and shake that focus.

If you are at a bar, go get a shot with friends, and have a good old time shootin’ down a shot of whiskey. Grab a buddy and butt chests, or tell them a lame joke you heard.

When you focus on having fun instead of on the process of what you are doing, you can avoid the fixation that may be causing you to get more nervous and strike out. I don’t want you to strike out, that’s no fun for you, or the girl.

Baseball — and hitting on women — should be fun. Keep that in mind as the primary goal for a night out on the town, and it will all work out.

Batter up.