“You Miss All The Shots You Don’t Take.” — Wayne Gretzky

A quote by the great Wayne Gretzky has been following me around, poking me in my gray matter for years.

For those of you who don’t know who Wayne Gretzky is, he’s ah, hockey person.

I’ve meant to write about this quote for quite some time, but for whatever reason, it just never got done.

Lately, talking on live video about this thirsty thing has had quite a few people writing to me and saying things like, “Okay, so I don’t wanna be thirsty. Um, what do I do? I also don’t want to offend anybody. I don’t want to make any mistakes. I don’t want to upset people, you know, I want to be liked. I want to be loved. I want to be appreciated. Um, but mostly I don’t want to make mistakes.”

Last night we were talking in Kinky Book Club with Lee Harrington about gender, and one of the things we talked about is that when it comes to the complexities of gender gender, at some point you are going to make a mistake.

You’re going to step in a big time, and that’s okay.

In fact, just last week I podcasted about getting rejected, how to get rejected more often and why it’s important to get rejected more often.

So this is actually tying into that.

So Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Simple, right?

If you don’t actually put in the effort, if you don’t do anything, you’re going to miss those chances.

So for those of you who have said in the past, “Well, I guess I’m just not going to do anything, because anything I do is going to offend somebody,” well, NO.

That’s not the right answer, because you don’t deserve to be alone and miserable either, right?

You may have a lot of things to learn.

You may need to grow and become a better person to attract the type of people that you’re looking for.

But giving up and not doing anything is not the right answer.

So you miss 100% of the chances you don’t take, but do you know what else is true?

No matter how amazing you are, you are gonna miss most of the shots you do take, too.

It’s just the way of the world.

In baseball, hitting three out of 10 or four out of 10 balls is fuckballs amazing-like that makes you a rock star.

So if you think about it, if you make your shot and you miss or you step in it or you bomb, that’s just part of how things go.

The key is to learn from it.

What works?

What doesn’t?

Keep practicing, keep growing, keep getting better.

Or ,aybe you’re taking the wrong shots. Maybe you’re taking shots at the net when you need to take shots at an assist, you know somebody who’s gonna help you make that goal.

I’m talking very sportsball here, and I’m not a huge sports ball person, obviously.

So bear with me on this.

Maybe instead of shooting straight at the goal, you need to shoot at an interim spot. You need to shoot someone that’s gonna help you get closer to that goal, to help you make that shot.

Learn about these things.

Practice more.

So when it comes to thirst, I understand.

It is so so hard to want something and to want to talk about it and then to find out, as somebody did just last week, that talking about it in the way that you do actually puts people off, repulses and repels them.

That’s a hard thing to hear.

But you know what?

That’s just something you do.

It’s something you have done.

It’s not who you are, and you’re gonna miss those shots sometimes.

But the key is you’re also going to win some shots.

Sometimes, sometimes you’re gonna post something, and somebody is going to say, “Hey, that was a great comment.”

Or sometimes you’re gonna post something and somebody is gonna laugh and appreciate your joke.

Or sometimes you’re gonna post something and it’s going to start an amazing conversation. And people are going to be really impressed with you.

Yeah, and that matters.

Everything you do builds up and matters.

So sure, you can decide to just give up.

I hope you don’t, though, because then you’re gonna be missing all of the shots.

But when you try, don’t think that just because all of a sudden you’re trying and you’re putting in the effort that you’re suddenly going to win, either.

I don’t make all of the shots I take.

AT ALL.

I’ve been building Dating Kinky for over three years, and it’s taken me until this year to really start growing and really start getting traction.

I like to joke that the past few years have been like college for me.

I’ve been putting lots of money out, and making very little and studying hard and working my tail off and breaking down and getting frustrated and learning a ton about all of this. And I’ve fucked up and I’ve stepped in it and I’ve made mistakes along the way.

I hired the wrong people and I trusted the wrong people and I did some things right, too.

I did some things very right, and I’m really, really, really starting to learn from all of that and put all of that together.

Dating is the same.

It might take you years to really get a handle on it.

But every tiny success along the way adds up, and soon you’ll go from not being able to hit the ball or the puck at all, missing it constantly, to being able to score regularly and being, you know, most valuable player.

Or maybe you’ll never get to that point.

Because somewhere along the way you’ll find the one person (if you’re monogamous) or the number of people (if you’re not monogamous) that you’re looking for and you won’t feel the need to keep taking those shots anymore.

So let me leave you with this:

You’re going to miss all the shots you don’t take.

You’re gonna miss most of the shots you do take.

Don’t let that stop you from taking the shots.

Originally published at https://datingkinky.com on October 7, 2020.