TSSI #13 - The Pain of Going ‘All-In’
Read Time: 2 minutes
Success is about giving your best efforts & maximizing your potential.
So, why don’t people work hard when it’s in their best interest to do so?
The answer:
It’s actually really risky to give your best efforts.
Think about talented athletes that are known to cut corners & not sacrifice everything for their sport.
Phil Mickelson, John Daly, Shaquille O’Neil, Nick Kyrgios, Bernard Tomic, Mario Balotelli.
When these guys lose and don’t perform well, they always have some form of excuse that they can tell themselves:
“I was up playing video games all night. If I didn’t do that I would have won”
“I wasn’t trying my hardest”
“I was out partying”
By not giving everything, they open the door for excuses, which is a form of self-protection.
Now think about the best athletes of all time.
Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Novak Djokovic, Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi.
These guys not only work as hard as possible on the court or field, but their lives revolve around being the best they can be.
Nutrition
Recovery
Sleep
They dial in every aspect of their lives to leave no stone unturned.
They prepared like no one else did in their respective sports.
And when they lose, it must be devastating.
They have no excuses when they fail. They just weren’t good enough.
Which is painful to deal with.
The ego and self-worth take a hit.
It takes a huge amount of resilience & mental toughness to tolerate this emotional pain.
The point here is that it’s far more psychologically dangerous to give your all, than to not give your all.
Some might argue that they’d prefer to not give their all & not have to suffer as much?
However…
We all must suffer one of two pains…the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
Discipline leads to short-term pain. Regret leads to long-term pain.
Working hard & giving your all can be painful, but the regret of not giving your all ultimately hurts more.
So the question is:
Does hard work and giving everything build mental toughness? Or does mental toughness allow you to work hard & give everything?
Either way, mental toughness is required to deal with the increased psychological pain that maximizing your potential demands.
Recapping:
Working hard is actually really risky.
Not working hard is a form of self-protection (Tanking / poor preparation etc.)
It's easy to "hedge and preserve optionality." It's hard to go all-in on something.
It's far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare.
You either suffer short-term pain of discipline, or the long-term pain of regret
Mental toughness is required to deal with the short-term pain of going all in.
This post was inspired by a tweet from Arjun Mahadevan...which was inspired by the work of Malcolm Gladwell.
Caveat:
This newsletter was not meant to put down any athletes…each have achieved incredible things. And it’s not to say that they don’t work hard…I’m sure they do. They are just known to not be as "all in" as the best athletes in the world.
Not the perfect example, but my goal was to highlight the work ethic of the best athletes in the world, and the increased short-term psychological pain that they feel as a consequence.
