How to Always Go All In – ElPropósito6 min de lectura

Ten ways to find the resolve to always go "all in"

Photo by Robert Baker on Unsplash

The last quarter of the year is the home stretch for many goals, dreams and hopes. A few big factors can predict, with fair accuracy, whether a goal will succeed or fail, and one of them is the resolve and focus you bring at the start. In short: feeling, at a given moment, that you will reach what you want, and that you can go "all in".

I picked up "all in" from my MBA classmates, partly from watching them play poker, but mostly from the resolve they showed toward a goal at a specific moment and their certainty that it was, in their minds, already done before they’d achieved it. The phrase caught on among all of us, and to this day it’s how I start any journey: ALL IN. This is probably another of my rare long posts, but it earns the space, and I hope it leaves you ready to always go all in.

I’ve always believed your attitude at the start of any dream, idea or goal is the key ingredient that lays the foundation you’ll build on. From the outset, it tells me whether I’ll be walking on quicksand (of my own making, out of early insecurities) or on solid ground, even if that ground is the iciest mountains, the hottest deserts or the most dangerous oceans.

When you set out determined to reach a goal, I think ten things are worth keeping in mind. Together, they’re the recipe for going ALL IN:

• The why: You feel it in your heart, your soul, your gut and your mind. Starting something knowing the meaning it gives your life is the first big step in any adventure or venture. Success begins at the start, when the goal is set and what we long for gives our life meaning. That’s the spark that says, "this is what I’ve wanted, or what we’ve wanted, so badly".
• Embrace uncertainty: Humanity has never been able to predict the future. So all that’s left is to do what’s in our hands, and I think that comes down to two things: being aware of the uncertainty and trying. Fear fades once you embrace the unknown and take the first step.
• Imagine the future: We can’t predict the future, but we can imagine it, one of the great and wonderful abilities life gave us. Starting anything guided by that dream already achieved is an endless source of creativity and energy.
• Confidence: A small word for a great value. Trust is earned or lost, in ourselves and in others. Here I mean self-confidence, the power that rises from within at every moment. Keeping it alive means believing in ourselves and in our incredible ability to achieve whatever we set out to do. Building confidence goes hand in hand with peace of mind, meaning the ability to switch off thoughts of past and future that drain our energy and focus on what we can do here and now.
• Preparation and hard work: "Do your work." No one will do it for you, and when in doubt, we’re always the ones responsible for our own future. Hard work is in danger of extinction, especially in a world where everything is within everyone’s reach and we believe technology came to make life easy (nothing could be further from the truth).
• One step a day: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," Lao Tzu. Any step beats no step, and it’s normal not to know which way to go at times. For that I also lean on a line from Picasso: "Action is the foundational key to all success." Whatever it is and wherever it leads, always take a step. Another inspiration is sure to follow, and then another.
• The day has 24 hours: In my last post I wrote that time is a scarce resource, perhaps the scarcest of all. Goals don’t let you bank the steps from the point before. The step you need to take at a given moment always has a deadline, and the day has just enough time to take it. No referee will call the foul, and certainly no one will take it for us.
• Know that everything is temporary and everything passes: Here I love the line "Pain is temporary, pride is forever." Any effort, time, research or study that brings us closer to our dreams is temporary, and before we know it, it will have passed. Beyond success or failure, what remains is a wealth of lessons, joy, pride and satisfaction.
• A support team: Behind every stage there’s a great crew giving the actors everything they need to shine and deliver their best performance. On our own stage, the whole team has to be on board and share the same hope, and a time will come when it’s our turn to make others shine too.
• Lessons learned: I’ve always believed there’s no single peak or single mountain we climb before stopping for good. By nature, we humans always want more and more (I’ll write about this in another post). As we keep climbing, we need moments to reflect on the strategies that got us here. The greatest gift we can give humanity is to note those reflections and share what we know, even knowing every mountain is different for every person.

When you’re about to take something on, how do you know you’re going ALL IN?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. This week’s VELA(E):

• What I’ve been Viewing: The human skills we need in an unpredictable world. A TED Talk on how, in a world ever more flooded with technology, we can find ways to keep shining and make the most of our potential.
• What I’ve been Listening to: I try to make every day a small life in 24 hours. I watched this YouTube video once and listened to it twice this week. A great Spanish writer I’d never heard of, and now I want to meet him in person. A wonderful talk about his life, his successes and his struggles, and how reading and art came together to make him who he is today.
• What I’ve been Reading: 3 Reasons It’s So Hard to Follow Your Passion. I write a lot about the passions, dreams, hopes and goals we should all pursue at some point, yet there are limits, and this HBR article explains them well.
• What I’ve been Learning: Blockchain. A Harvard Business Review book on a technology I find amazing. It’s only just getting started, and very soon we’ll see it reach every corner of the planet, the way the internet did.
• What I’ve been Exploring: The Atlas of Economic Complexity. A powerful tool. If you want to see how your country’s economy, or any other, is built, where its growth opportunities lie and what it exports and imports, explore this data visualization atlas from Harvard.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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