G’day Chiefs,

Today we are going to talk about how you can elevate yourself to a new level of being through the all-in mindset.

Sometimes, I refer to it as climbing without ropes; you have to go all-in on this particular challenge. I remember watching the Olympics last year, and seeing incredible efforts from athletes that were just pushing themselves to the absolute limit of their ability, physically and mentally. Years and years behind closed doors, and then there they were, on the biggest stage of all.

Breaking the shackles

A few times now, I've undertaken enormous challenges. One was the Gobi March, which is a 250km race across the desert in China. Now, why did I do that event? I did that because I felt I had plateaued as an individual. There I was, in my mid to late twenties, feeling like I just wasn't nailing it. I was not on top of my game and I was floating on autopilot. I was reading self-help books, but I hadn't done the one thing that counted. The all-in mindset of, “Let's go and do something that will fundamentally change the way I feel, think, and operate.” And I know how I thought about the world before and after that challenge, was different.

Every now and then in life, you need to fundamentally change everything about the way you see the world. You might decide to do the best course you can in your technical area, even one that is really expensive that takes you a couple of years to do. But at the end of it, you know you will have learned so much, that you will see the world differently. It's a metamorphosis of who you are, and you’re going to go all-in on this, and nothing is going to stop you from finishing.

Building momentum

If you think about your life, what were the things that you've achieved that required you to go all in, in order to get a result? In order to lift your game? In order to change and grow, either mentally, or technically, or tactically, or physically, in order to be a new person at the end of it? What were those key accomplishments? And then, maybe ask yourself, is there something in a chapter that's in front of me, either the next couple of years or after that, where you can do this again, where you can find a way to push yourself to a new level?

There's little opportunities too at the end of a hard week, when you're exhausted and there's nothing left within you to give. But you say to yourself, “You know what? I am just going to go for 15 more minutes. And I'm just going to make sure that everything that I finish off this week, is finished with perfection. And I go all-in and make sure I deliver extra quality work on a project, so that it's absolutely perfect and I can stand by it. And when I walk away from that piece of work, it's something I'm really proud of.” Then you progress from once a week to two or three times a week in little all-in moments; that’s when they start to build up.

Charting your course

So the way I want you to think about this is in two ways. Think about the chapters of your life, the next two to three years, and then two to three years after that, and so on. Is there, in one of those little stages, one of those chapters, an opportunity to do something that is game-changing for you personally? Is there something on which you can go all-in?

And then, within those chapters, on a week-to-week basis, even day-to-day, what are the little projects? What are the key moments that's going to pay dividends if you decide you are going to go all-in and absolutely nail something like an Olympic athlete? And then you dedicate yourself to excellence, and you grow mastery, and you nail it in a way you've never nailed it before.

That, Chiefs, is the all-in mindset, and it can be life-changing if you draw upon it at the right time. You can’t do it all the time as that's exhausting. But every now and then, you know that there's going to be a great opportunity to go all-in and dedicate a portion of a chapter of your life to something that will really shift the dials for you.

Stay epic,
Greg