On always showing up.

You always have an option. The question is what do you choose, and how well do you stick with that?

On my wall, I have some brown paper taped up for writing and drawing. I couldn’t really afford a whiteboard, so paper had to do. On one of the papers, I’ve written two mantras of mine. “Always show up.” and “Good enough for now, safe enough to try.” They’ve both been very important to me, both before and after adapting them as mantras. The other day, I realised that I’d lost touch with one of those mantras, and that’s what I want to shine a light upon in this text.

From a really early age on, I had a sense for principles. It was important to me to do things right and by those principles. I had a situation when I was in kindergarten where my teachers there had to call my mom. We were supposed to paint self-portraits and I refused. Later that same day, my mom asked me what the refusal was all about, and I told her that I didn’t want to get it wrong. I started painting as soon as everybody else was done, because by then I could walk around and see what they’d done so that I wouldn’t be out of line. Because I didn’t do wrong.

I’ve had many such principles growing up, some that have served me and some that haven’t as much. One that I quite recently let go of was the principle of not dancing. I didn’t dance. At all. I realised that what I really wanted to accomplish with that was an excuse not to go to clubs, which I don’t enjoy at all. But dancing can be fun outside of that.

One principle that I got from my mom is that one doesn’t quit in the middle of something. You finish what you’ve started, and you do so with all of your heart. In other words, always show up.

And that’s how I’ve lived up until a while back. I was the kind of person who regardless of what happened, I’d show up and do my part. In the conversation, I realised that I’d stopped doing that. I’m no longer the kind of person who always show up. Rather, I’m now the kind of person who quits far too easily, and that I’d get really annoyed with back then. I don’t want to be that person. There are all sorts of reasons to why.

One of my most cherished personal values is trust. I want to be trustworthy, and I want people to rely on me when I say I’ll do something or be somewhere. That goes well in hand with always showing up, not so much with cancelling every now and then without any given reasons. Not living my personal values has taken a toll on me. It’s opened up the possibility of not giving my all and not committing, which has made it hard for me to commit to anything fully. Instead, I’ve taken on as many responsibilities as I can, and not fully fulfilled any of them.

I went through a similar experience before this summer, as I realised that the reason to why I wasn’t committing to school was a fear of failure. And I think that’s very much a reason not to commit, because it is scary to fail. And it is scary to commit to something that might fail, especially when knowing that there are hundreds of other things that you can do that might not fail. Going all in scary. Committing to always show up is scary.

There’s a saying that one shouldn’t pull all their eggs in one basket. When it comes to finance and gambling, I very much believe that approach. But when it comes to engagement, that metaphor becomes flawed, as you don’t have a limited amount of eggs. You can go all in on your health at the same time as you’re going all in on school. It’s about mindset. Of course, it might be impossible to go all in on everything that you want to do so with, as time and energy are limited resources, but my experience is those reasons are most commonly excuses. Go all in on what you want to do, and most importantly: define what going all in means in each and every case.

Always show up can mean always going to class, just as well as showing up to the time you’ve set off for studying every day.

At this point, I feel it important to talk a little about why all of this feels important to me. It was very well put by Seth Godin in a conversation with Tim Ferriss that I listened to the other day. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, “I want to do the best possible work. For that I need to be a professional, and continually do that work. Being a professional means showing up despite having a bad day. I mean, I wouldn’t want my surgeon to walk out in the middle of a surgery, leaving my knee open, just because he wasn’t feeling it.”.

I want to do exceptional work as well, I always have. In order to do that, I feel it important to always show up. I might not feel it, but I rely on me, and in some cases others do too.

Going all in doesn’t mean letting everything else flow by. It means committing and doing the best you can continuously. It’s not for everybody, as everybody doesn’t need to feel the same level of trustworthiness that I do or get that feeling in the same way I do. But in order to be true to myself and my values, I need to always show up. I need to go all in.