All In on FiWi

Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. To any first-time listeners, I hope you decide to stick around, because I’m glad you’re here. And to my returning listeners, it’s great to have you here with me again. What’s the last thing you really wanted? What were you willing to do for it?

This morning, before I started teaching my first lesson of the day, I needed to set up our WiFi with our new internet provider. The one-year contract we signed with our previous internet service provider ends tomorrow, and the monthly price was going to increase rather substantially. I started searching for alternatives earlier this month, and found an option that bundles together our phone and internet for half the price. The setup went well. I just needed to plug it in, and it began working right away. The hardest part of the entire process was deciding what the new WiFi ID would be.

I like to select network names that are puns using the sounds in the word “WiFi.” Some of my past favorites have been “Pretty Fly for a WiFi” and “Tell My WiFi Love Her.” Our last ID was “Why Fry? Why Not?” because here in America, we love our deep-fried food. After much deliberation, I decided to go with “Find Your Why.” This one is a bit of a twist on the convention, since it reverses the sounds from WiFi to FiWi, but I like it because it’s a real sentence, one you often hear in the world of self-help and motivational speaking. We’ll dive into that a little more in a moment. But first, I’d like to look at the phrase for today’s episode.

Today’s phrase is “all in.” All in.

If you’ve ever watched people play poker, you’ve probably seen this one in action. In poker, going “all in” means pushing every single chip you have into the middle of the table, betting absolutely everything on one hand. There’s no holding back, and there’s no going halfway. You’re fully committed, win or lose. I’ll be honest with you: language detectives still argue about exactly where this phrase first came from, and some trace it to older gambling slang, but the poker image is the one almost everyone pictures, and it’s the perfect one for our purposes today.

Outside of poker, to be “all in” means to be completely committed to something: a goal, a plan, a cause, a person. No half-effort. Not one foot out the door. You’re giving it everything you’ve got.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be all in, because my own life is asking a lot of that from me right now. Keep that phrase in mind. You’ll see exactly what I mean before we’re done.

I love Saturdays. On Saturdays, I typically only work from 5am to 9am. After that, I usually have a lot of time to spend with my wife. A few months ago, I was asked by some of the leadership at my church if I would be willing to organize the church cleaning, and now every Saturday morning I go and help clean the church building. There are three of us who show up and pull our weight week after week. The main job I’ve taken on is washing the windows. I’m able to finish in about an hour and a half. So, on Saturdays from 9am to about 10:30am, I go to the church to wash windows.

On top of that, I’ve been trying to streamline how I record the scripts I write. Instead of recording the audio on the same day I write each script, I’ve started recording in batches. The day I decided would be easiest to set aside for recording the five episodes I’d written throughout the week was, you guessed it, Saturday. The recording process gets faster the more I do it, but right now there are still plenty of inefficiencies. This last Saturday, I ended up spending about four hours on it, plus some other miscellaneous things related to the website.

It wasn’t all work, though. My wife and I were able to go out to dinner with her aunt and uncle and their kids. We went to one of our favorite barbecue places here in Texas, called The Salt Lick. They have a spectacular selection of meats, with delicious coleslaw and potato salad as the main sides. I got ribs, spicy sausage, and brisket, while my wife ordered the sausage and turkey. It was great getting to spend time with everyone at one of our favorite places. I left having eaten so much that I nearly went into a food coma. A food coma, by the way, is a humorous way to describe eating so much that all you want to do is take a nap.

All of this is to say that my Saturday was busy, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Sacrificing my weekends for volunteer work at the church and getting my podcast up and running could be a frustrating experience. But here’s the thing I keep coming back to. It is far less upsetting to sacrifice something good, or something fun, when you’re all in on something you believe is great. So, how can you go all in on something? Where does that commitment actually come from?

This brings me back to my WiFi ID.

“Find your why” means discovering your core reason, your deepest motivation, for moving forward. It could be something like losing 10 pounds because you want to look your very best in your wedding photos. The timescale might be short, maybe you want it done in three months, but it’s still a powerful “why.” That motivation will push you to succeed where you may have failed before.

It can also be something on a much longer timescale. Studying English for years so you can communicate better with your spouse and their family. Selling your car and taking the bus to work for two years so you can get out of debt and gain financial independence. Going back to university for four years because you want to start a new career and provide for your growing family. Find your why. When you have that, the sacrifices stop feeling like a burden, and start feeling like the price of something worth having.

Once you’ve found your “why” and you’re all in, two more phrases tend to describe what comes next. Both are about commitment, effort, and staying the course, and both have surprisingly rich histories.

The first is “go the extra mile.” Today it simply means to do more than is required, to put in effort beyond what’s expected. But the phrase comes straight out of the Bible, from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. Here’s the context that makes it click. In that era, under Roman law, a soldier could force an ordinary person to carry his heavy pack for one mile. Just one. It was the law, and people resented it. Jesus told his followers that when they were forced to go one mile, they should offer to go two. The “extra” mile was the one nobody could make you walk. You chose it freely. The modern phrase, in the form we use today, didn’t become common until about the 1930s, but that original image is still perfect: the extra mile is the part nobody is forcing you to do. It’s the effort you give because you’re all in.

The second phrase is “keep your eye on the prize.” This one means to stay focused on your goal, especially when things get hard and distractions pile up. The phrase as we know it was made famous by a song that became an anthem of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and ‘60s. That song was itself adapted from a much older gospel tune. The idea of a “prize” worth pressing toward goes back even further, to the writings of the Apostle Paul. So this is one of those phrases that has been passed across generations, each one keeping the same core meaning: don’t lose sight of what you’re working toward.

Put them side by side and you can see how they fit today’s theme. Find your why gives you the destination. Keeping your eye on the prize keeps that destination in view when the road gets long. And going the extra mile is what you’re suddenly willing to do once that prize means enough to you. For me right now, the prize is a podcast that genuinely helps people, and a family I get to support and be present for. That’s what makes the the late nights burning the midnight oil to write a script, early Saturday mornings teaching students, and the four-hour recording sessions feel less like a sacrifice and more like a choice.

The next time you hear someone say they “went the extra mile,” or that they’re “keeping their eye on the prize,” notice what their prize actually is. There’s almost always a “why” hiding right underneath it.

I used to do a lot of meditation, and one thing I included alongside my meditation sessions was visualization. I think it’s a wonderful tool for maintaining motivation and staying focused on your “why.”

So here’s the challenge. Write down your “why” for learning English. Maybe it’s a better job. Maybe it’s traveling to a foreign country, or understanding a new culture, or an upcoming move. Once you’ve written it down, take a few moments to picture who you’ll become, and the life you’ll be able to live, when you’ve put in the time to learn English successfully. Hold on to that vision. That’s your prize. Keep your eye on it.

And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.