80% Man. This is what my mom used to call me. “Why don’t you go for a 100%?”, she would always ask me. She was right, I always went for B or B+ because hey, if C is average and B is above average, isn’t that good? Like, why do we always need to strive for an A?
When there were school elections I always shot for VP, or second best positions. Why? That’s still a position of power, why do I need to be the top? For AP exams I didn’t study for a 5, I studied for a 4 and I was very happy with that result. There’s a certain kind of comfort in being good enough.
But over time this became a very big limiting factor because I realized, I had lost the power to go 100%. I had gotten so used to the lifestyle of 80% I just defined myself as that man. So I gave up on a lot of things in life without even trying because those are probably for the 100% people rather than 80% like me.
Breaking out of this loop was the biggest coaching achievement I had as a client. Turns out I WAS capable of 100%, and I just didn’t want to go all in on anything. I stopped seeing myself as a 80% man and could appreciate my full capacity.
Then I realized, I still wasn’t free from the habit of going 80%; I actually did not have the skillset to go in 100%. I was free from the idea of a 80% man but that didn’t automatically turn me into a 100% man. I kept on braking, I kept on putting limitations on myself.
How do you actually go in? How do you become a 100% man?
Defining 100%
The most important thing is to first define what your 100% is. This is the most crucial step that is often overlooked. How can you tell if you did a 100% of something if you don’t even know what it is? For example, one might go to the gym and say “I’m going to give 100% of myself today”. But what is that? 5 reps? 10 reps? Reps until failure?
I define my 100% every day as waking up at 5, doing 108 bows, and meditating. But some days I’ll do 324 or 540 bows, and some days I’ll meditate for an hour or two. I don’t just randomly decide to do it, I decide in advance what day I am going to devote to a deeper prayer practice.
We want to give our 100% because we want to not have regrets about “I could have done more”. So the principle of voluntary, humanly possible, and challenging goal still applies here; when your goal isn’t challenging enough, your 100% can feel lackluster. When your goal isn’t humanly possible, you will be defeated all the time. When your goal isn’t voluntary, you won’t ever push yourself out of your comfort zone.
On To the Next
When you’re in the practice of working towards your 100%, you will encounter distractions and the urge to quit. Most likely you will actually be distracted and quit. Why? Because we’re not necessarily consciously engaged with what we are doing.
In the first days of doing 108 bows, I stopped to get a drink of water or catch my breath every 20 bows or so. It was ridiculously hard to start again after the break. Over time I learned that the more I rest, the more I want to completely quit; and so I started reducing my breaks until I couldn’t breathe properly. Every time I catch myself not bowing, I just go on to the next bow.
Same applies to meditation. The time is ticking, but I don’t know how many minutes I have left. I want to open my eyes, I want to keep thinking about other things; but it is precisely at this time I need to refocus. Every time I catch myself drifting away, I go on to the next breath.
Over time this becomes second nature and it will actually be more difficult to quit midway throughout your progress. Yay!
Journey Of Journeys
Like I mentioned with my occasional 324 or 540 bows, it’s important to have a meta-goal. The 100% achievement you are going for has to be a part of a bigger 100% achievement goal. While every day my 100% goal is the daily routine, my bigger goal is to do it for a thousand days (I recently passed 500 days!).
Maybe your goal is to apply to 40 jobs. What will that progress into? Interviewing at all the jobs regardless of whether you get offers or not. What will that progress into? Applying to 40 jobs again next year to test your growth. And so on. Turns out interviews are free and they’re a great opportunity to test the waters in your industry!
If you’re getting over a breakup maybe the goal is to clean up the house for 3 hours. Then that will progress into taking 3 days to re-fill the home with new memories. Then that will progress into taking 3 weeks to do activities you enjoy doing. And so on. Progressing onto journey of journeys will keep you on a path to success.
Many times we think going 100% is burning ourselves completely to ashes and calling it quits. That can be 100%, but that kind of a lifestyle cannot be sustainable by definition and given natural human tendencies it puts more weight on the success/failure dynamic of desired results. Thinking of 100%ing in this way shifts our goals from external to internal; we make goals about what we can do, not what we can get from the world.
Don’t know what I’m talking about when I say 108 bows? Check out my free Buddhism practice guide.