Don't squeeze (or bite) the sawdust from the bat.

I struggled with the title for this. Was going to call it "Don't try so hard" or "A barber's wisdom" or "Rely on your training and instincts". Instead of these, I relied on my instincts and stuck with a baseball metaphor. Ok, ok, the image is about biting the sawdust from the bat, but you get it.

I was sitting in the barber's chair last week, talking life and career with my barber of 20+ years.. He's a former pro ballplayer. We were talking about success, failure, challenges, everything. He shared a quote with me he'd seen on the internet a few days earlier. “Father, how will I ever find the right woman. His father replied, forget about finding the right woman, focus on being the right man."

He said that when he was in a batting slump, he didn't try to squeeze the sawdust out of the bat to get a hit. Instead, he relaxed and relied on what he learned through practice and experience.

Chuck is a guy who's been through life's travails. Not formally educated but incredibly smart, and he's seen a wide spectrum of people find their way into his chair for a haircut and life discussions. He told me that a heckuva lot of folks have come through his shop and one thing he concluded is said that successful people are the ones that don't get too stressed. 

"The successful people relax, have fun, trust instincts, rely on experience and do what comes naturally." And he knows this not just from the thousands of people who've sat in his chair and share their stories with him. He knows this from his own life experiences, too.

Maybe I should've titled this "A barber's wisdom."