Giving your best in every endeavour can be life-changing! Always go all in; it’s the best approach to living maximally. Channel your full energy towards your goals, both long and short term. Go for it with your fullest engagement and with as much focus as you can muster at any given moment. One must live intentionally, to the fullest, with absolute devotion, rather than just exist. Whether you believe in only having one life or reincarnation, it is an important obligation, especially to yourself and the spirit that animates you, to use and improve all the faculties nature has granted you.
Take playing the piano for instance; I often used to do things like look away when playing a piece I knew relatively well, or play with no regard for the musical details of the composition, playing pieces one after the other like small etudes (musical exercises). Looking back, I ask myself why? Why do something with such a lack of intent and attention, when I could have taken every opportunity on the piano to perfect my skills, and to savour every moment, paying keen attention to details. However, part of being human sometimes involves unwillingness to exert extra energy for certain things, particularly when we feel we already have a hang of some of these things. This is a detrimental approach because it impedes our growth, and our opportunities to discover things.
So, I had absolutely no reason at all not to pay full attention to playing the piano when already sitting there to begin with. I realized that if I was going to commit the time to piano anyways, that I should go all in to get the best experience from that time. The same goes for other things, like lectures. We all have been lectured whether within or without the confines of school. We are all guilty (or at least I am) of losing focus while listening to a lecture when we could have been paying rapt attention to gain new knowledge, improve on existing knowledge, and take corrections. There are many kinds of lectures of course, and some are much easier to be attentive to than others. For example, usually, when we are being lectured by our parents and we sense any harsh tone, we most often tune out their voices in our heads for psychological protection.
In the case of class lectures, we sometimes intentionally let our minds wander because we feel the lecture is becoming too long or boring. However, are any of these good enough reasons not to make the most of the time we are already spending? Are these good enough reasons not to gain the useful, possibly unique information you have paid to receive? Or to not learn a better approach to life from being corrected by your parents, whether or not their tone is the best in that moment? We certainly miss out on chances to learn and grow if we are not going all in, especially in somewhat uncomfortable situations that are ultimately for our own good.
It is no different from going to the gym. You have to go all in to get the results you want. So, if you’re writing a cover letter, go all in and get the job you want, that could potentially lead to a significant change in your life beyond what you imagined. If you’re in a lecture, go all in and study less after, get a better grade, feel better about yourself, and become more capable of solving problems in related subjects. If you’re talking to someone, go all in and be curious, build a strong partnership or connection with them, learn from them and have fun. Practicing sports or absolutely anything that can positively impact your life? Go all in and reap the rewards, the satisfaction, and impress yourself and others.
Anyways, why would we want so much less, when we could have so much more, with just a bit of added effort? The only price we pay is our mental energy. Interestingly, mental energy significantly increases in reserves if expended. That is, if you use more of it, you’ll gain more of it. Sort of like investment – if you strategically invest your money, you will get a lot more in the long-run.
While the idea of going all in might seem trivial for the most part, embracing it for immeasurable outcomes in our lives is not in the least bit trivial. Most of us live our entire lives putting only fractions of ourselves into even our greatest dreams and desires, achieving only meagre results, and mostly out of laziness or lack of zeal. For clarity, I’m not talking about working all the time and getting too consumed in your ambition to achieve, but finding the drive and energy to get the most out of whatever we are doing, to get more out of life than we would otherwise. In other words, we must use our time more wisely and productively in whatever we do because whether we achieve anything or not, time moves forward, and we have absolutely no control over that. But, we do have control of what we achieve within that time. If you think about it, time is truly one of our greatest assets (besides those you love). This idea warrants its own article, so watch out for it!
Finally, one way you can start going all in in your life, is by taking a chance on yourself and putting your all to things. It is one conscious step at a time that gets us to the point where going all in becomes a part of our lifestyle. At that point, we experience more satisfaction and better results or improvement, and growth of our mental energy reserves in the process! This way, we are fully human, fully alive, and can be fully confident of who we are and who we are becoming.
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